Eye of the fly<\/strong><\/p>\nTo address the durability challenge, the Stanford team turned to nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were inspired by the compound eye of the fly, which consists of hundreds of tiny segmented eyes,\u201d Dauskardt explained. \u201cIt has a beautiful honeycomb shape with built-in redundancy: If you lose one segment, hundreds of others will operate. Each segment is very fragile, but it\u2019s shielded by a scaffold wall around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using the compound eye as a model, the researchers created a compound solar cell consisting of a vast honeycomb of perovskite microcells, each encapsulated in a hexagon-shaped scaffold just 0.02 inches (500 microns) wide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scaffold is made of an inexpensive epoxy resin widely used in the microelectronics industry,\u201d Rolston said. \u201cIt\u2019s resilient to mechanical stresses and thus far more resistant to fracture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tests conducted during the study revealed that the scaffolding had little effect on how efficiently perovskite converted light into electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got nearly the same power-conversion efficiencies out of each little perovskite cell that we would get from a planar solar cell,\u201d Dauskardt said. \u201cSo we achieved a huge increase in fracture resistance with no penalty for efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Durability<\/strong><\/p>\nBut could the new device withstand the kind of heat and humidity that conventional rooftop solar panels endure?<\/p>\n
To find out, the researchers exposed encapsulated perovskite cells to temperatures of 185 F (85 C) and 85 percent relative humidity for six weeks. Despite these extreme conditions, the cells continued to generate electricity at relatively high rates of efficiency.<\/p>\n
Dauskardt and his colleagues have filed a provisional patent for the new technology. To improve efficiency, they are studying new ways to scatter light from the scaffold into the perovskite core of each cell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very excited about these results,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a new way of thinking about designing solar cells. These scaffold cells also look really cool, so there are some interesting aesthetic possibilities for real-world applications.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other co-lead authors of the study are Stanford postdoctoral scholars Brian Watson and Adam Printz.<\/em><\/p>\nThis work was supported by a grant from the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy with additional support from the<\/em>\u00a0National Science Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\nFuente:<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/news.stanford.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Una nueva c\u00e9lula solar inspirada en los ojos compuestos de los insectos podr\u00eda ayudar a los cient\u00edficos a superar un obst\u00e1culo importante para el desarrollo… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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The compound eye of a fly inspired Stanford researchers to create a compound solar cell consisting of perovskite microcells encapsulated in a hexagon-shaped scaffold.(Image credit: Thomas Shahan\/Creative Commons)<\/span><\/div>\n