Want to brew beer or bake bread in your backyard using sunlight? It may soon be possible with a breakthrough artificial system of nanomaterials and living organisms that mimics photosynthesis. Professor Christopher Chang of the University of California, Berkeley co-led a team that developed the system, which is the size of a semiconductor chip.

"The interesting thing about the biological organisms that we're using for these studies is that they're essentially the same types of organisms that you would use to brew beer, bake bread, and so because you can do fermentation, it provides a very sustainable type of process instead of having to use an input that would be not sustainable or not renewable."

Chang says his team wants to target value added household products for now, but it can also be used to make biofuels and pharmaceuticals.

"So there are many, many different types of possibilities, but what we're thinking, is that it's much more practical to have in this case, high value types of materials or compounds."