Artificial leaf captures light to power drug production

I've always concentrated on technologies or other tech subjects that I've been directly involved with. However, I do have a lot of interests and come across some pretty cool stuff. This is one of them. I was doing my usual look at my usual news sources and came across this article on TechCrunch.com about a small company in the Netherlands that is using artificial leaves to power the production of small batches of pharmaceuticals close to where they are need.

As the article says, artificial leaves aren't new. They are a class of device which passively converts light into power for various purposes, much like their organic counterparts in nature that convert light to energy via a process known as photosynthesis. As usual, nature's version is much more efficient and effective, but Timothy Noël and his team at Eindhoven University of Technology have developed a new type of sensor that is much more efficient than existing sensors, even on cloudy days. Pretty cool.

What other natural systems could we utilize or mimic to help ourselves? What about capturing the power of an awesomely powerful thunderstorm?

C.