New surface textures inspired by moth's eyes.

• Position: Solar Panels - Brief article

Light that bounces off of solar panels is lost energy and presents a ubiquitous problem for efficiently converting the sun's rays into electricity. A team of scientists from the Department of Energy's Brookhaven (N.Y.) National Laboratory and Stony Brook (N.Y.) University has developed a new anti-reflective design for solar panels based on nanostructured surface textures and inspired by the eyes of moths, which are designed to keep light from reflecting back out.

The team, which includes Matthew Eisaman, assistant professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at Stony Brook, showed that etching a nanoscale texture onto the silicon material itself creates an anti reflective surface that works as well as state-of-the-art thin-film multilayer coatings.

This method, submitted for patent protection, has potential for streamlining silicon solar cell production and reducing manufacturing costs. The approach may find additional applications in reducing glare from...