The common ground between leaves and solar panels

What are the common features of leaves and solar panels? Both absorb sunlight and convert it into energy. However, the surface of the solar panel is generally flat, while the leaf surface has fine texture and folds that allow the leaves to absorb sunlight to the maximum.

Recently, scientists inspired by nature to design a plastic solar panel with a similar structure to the leaf surface. Most surface-flattened solar panels convert only 18% of the energy into electricity after absorbing sunlight. The ridge-shaped solar panels can absorb more sunlight by guiding light waves, thus greatly improving the efficiency of converting light energy into electricity.

This ridged, pleated surface not only increases the efficiency of the solar panels, but also enables flexible plastics to replace the silicon originally used to make solar panels. Silicon absorbs light better than plastic in nature, but it is expensive and fragile. The pliable plastic is cheaper in comparison. Also more durable, but in general the performance of light absorption or not very good. With this leaf-shaped surface, however, solar panels made of flexible plastic can absorb the sun like ordinary solar panels, even better than normal solar panels.

Another benefit of a pleated surface is that it significantly increases the efficiency of the longest red end of the absorption spectrum of a solar panel. Traditional solar panels can only absorb a small amount of red and infrared light. However, this wrinkled surface can increase the efficiency of absorbing red light nearly 6 times. Plastic leafy solar panels have not yet been widely used. But because of the thin, flexible solar panels that can be applied to windows, clothes and most of the flat surfaces, one day they can revolutionize the solar industry.