Scientists in China and Japan have come up with a new system for getting power from the sun… by building solar panels like butterfly wings:
AZoM, the A to Z of Materials:
Di Zhang and colleagues…turned to the microscopic solar scales on butterfly wings in their search for improvements. Using natural butterfly wings as a mold or template, they… transferred those light-harvesting structures to Grätzel cells. Laboratory tests showed that the butterfly wing solar collector absorbed light more efficiently than conventional dye-sensitized cells. The fabrication process is simpler and faster than other methods