This technology ranges from completely abiotic, using solar photovoltaics or light capture materials coupled to electrocatalysts that are able to produce storage molecules like \(H_2\) and formic acid (REF- Appel 2003, White 2015), to efforts to improve the efficiency of natural photosynthesis by genetic engineering (Figure \ref{345033}). Abiotic approaches are typically high efficiency, high rate, but high cost; while biological approaches are self-assembling, self-repairing, but show low efficiency.
Hybrid photosynthetic schemes like electrosynthesis aim to combine features from completely abiotic and biological photosynthesis in order to produce a solar energy capture and storage system that has all of the advantages of both systems, and as few of the drawbacks as possible (Figure \ref{345033}). In Figure 1, panels B and C describe biotic \(CO_2\) fixation by \(H_2\) and EET mediation respectively and panels D and E describe abiotic \(CO_2\) fixation of \(H_2\) and EET-mediated hybrid photosynthesis respectively.