A Brisbane researcher has taken inspiration from flies in his quest to improve the efficiency of solar panels.
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Queensland University of Technology researcher Ziqi Sun started the hunt for the perfect solar cell about three years ago and began examining flies' eyes after realising its amazing capability to make the most of a tiny amount of light.
"They can capture very small light in very dark places, they can see the environment very clearly," he said.
Dr Sun discovered a flies' eyes had three layers that allowed them to capture a large amount of light and worked to replicate them using zinc-oxide and nanotechnology.
"The fly eye has three layers," he said.
"The top layer is a microlens structure that can capture light, the middle are channels that can guide and transport light and in centre is a hole to receive the signals.
"Our research was to copy the structure to fabricate this into nano scale."
Dr Sun said the nanomaterial was capable of capturing energy across a wide solar spectrum and could be used to improve the conversion of light to electricity.
"We have tried almost every material, panel structure, if we want to still improve efficiency, we have to open our eyes to come up with new designs or structures of materials," he said.
"The next step is to apply it to solar cells, we have not tested the efficiency so far, we have synthesised the structure."
Dr Sun said the research was an example of how nature could contribute to science.
"We have to get this idea from nature, we have to look at the two and must get to halfway point to connect with our research," he said.
The solar cell design is expected to be published in the journal Materials Today Chemistry.
