BlowFly Eyes Used to Make Better Solar Cells
1 August 2010 | Solar Power | No Comments
Searching for new solutions to improve the efficiency of solar cells has resulted in an important scientific discovery. A group of researchers found that eyes of one particular species of fly, the blowfly, could be usefull for making better solar cells. “These eyes are perfect for making solar cells because they would collect more sunlight from a larger area rather than just light that falls directly on a flat surface,” said Akhlesh Lakhtakia, from Penn State University.
Most of today’s solar cells reach their highest efficiency when the sunlight falls directly on them. When sun rays reach solar cell surface from a smaller angle, their efficiency decreases. Those strange eyes may improve significantly solar cells efficiency, but the real question is how to replicate them?! Some people have thought that it would be enough to grow millions of flies and harvest their eyes, but it would be somehow impractical and strange, I guess.
So, the first ideea, and it seems to be the best ideea, was to create a mould after those eyes. Scientists managed to create a template that could be used to replicate the eyes and this is how they did it: They extracted fly corneas and filled them with polydimethylsiloxane in order to protect their shape. Those corneas were mounted on a glass substrate and coated with nickel. All this work has resulted in a perfect mold.
Researchers stated that their next goal is to create a larger mold with same unique properties. This discovery seems to awakened the interest of researchers for other biological materials that could revolutionize solar cell technology.
Tags: blowfly eyes, blowfly solar cells, cornea mold cell, corneas solar cells, fly cells, fly eyes solar cells