Sunday, November 28, 2010

Moth Eyes Biomimicry for Solar Panels

Here is a biomimicry example that they are mimicing moth eyes for solar panels.  It would be interesting to see what the entire panels looks like as well but i was not able to find an example.  Wondering if it would be kinda crazy looking. But i always wondered what a biomimicry example would look like and now this is a pretty cool one. 
Moth Eyes Biomimicry for Solar Panels photo

Silicon is reflective, so a lot of light that could be turned into electricity is bounced back and lost. Anti-reflective coating is used, but its effectiveness is limited and it has downsides too. So while looking for a solution, researchers noticed that moths have very non-reflective eyes ("most likely an evolutionary defense against nocturnal predators"). The moth-eye process creates panels that reflect less than 2% of light. That's a vast improvement over the 35 to 40% reflection rate seen without the anti-reflection coating layers.

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