想要提高太阳能电池的性能?一组可再生能源的研究人员突发奇想----利用苍蝇眼睛制造太阳能电池,提高其性能。
研究人员发现一种特殊的苍蝇----绿头苍蝇的眼睛正好是做太阳能电池的最佳形状。来自宾夕法尼亚州立大学的项目研究领头人Akhlesh Lakhtakia说:“绿头苍蝇眼睛的形状不是平的,不像一般的电池,阳光直射在平坦的太阳能面板上,它收集阳光的广度比普通的电池更广,因此这种绿头苍蝇的眼睛正好适合制造成太阳能电池。”
要尝试把这种能提高效率的材料的纳米级属性体大量生产,这才是难题。养殖大量的绿头苍蝇然后收集他们的眼睛,这貌似不可行----说实话,让人起鸡皮疙瘩。我们需要一个能工业规模化大量精准得复制苍蝇角膜透镜的模具。
因此Akhlesh Lakhtakia 和一组专家采集了9对苍蝇的眼角膜,用聚合物----聚二甲硅氧烷填充起来,使之不变形,然后放在载玻片上,用五分硬币盖上,真空保存。结果怎样呢?一个能够用来准确复制苍蝇眼角膜样式的模子形成了。
下一步要做的,第一是增加模具的尺寸,增加到30个眼角膜,那么就能一次性产生更多。第二是检查其他生物表面,看看是否也会有能用纳米级模具模仿的属性;其中,蝴蝶翅膀的研究就是一例,研究组期待通过研究能够不用色素就创造出色彩。
其它译文: |
| 原文:Solar cells created from fly eyes |
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A team of renewable energy researchers have hit on a novel idea for improving the efficiency of solar cells -- creating them out of fly eyes.
It turns out that one particular species of fly -- the blowfly --
has eyes that are exactly the right shape. "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 project lead Akhlesh Lakhtakia, from Penn State University. The difficulty comes in trying to mass-produce the nanoscale
properties of the material that make it so efficient. Growing a vast
number of flies
and harvesting their eyes is impractical and -- let's be honest --
little creepy. A mould was needed that could reproduce the lenses in
sufficient detail on an industrial scale.
So Akhlesh Lakhtakia and a group of other scientists extracted nine fly corneas,
filled them with a polymer, polydimethylsiloxane, to protect their
shape, mounted them on a glass substrate, and then coated them with
nickel in a vacuum. The result? A template that could be used to
replicate the pattern exactly.
The next step is to increase the size of that mould, up to 30
corneas, so that more can be produced at once, and to examine other
biological surfaces for properties that could be mimicked by nanoscale
moulds. Butterfly wings are one, with the team hoping they might be
able to create colour without the use of pigment. 其它发现: |
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