'Invisible' Solar Technologies from Bio-Inspired Optics

数十亿年来，大自然通过自然选择优化了结构，这一过程将永远超过我们自己进行的任何“试错”优化程序。工程师可以从这些成就中学到很多东西。卷心菜白蝴蝶（Pieris brassicae）和玻璃翅蝴蝶（Greta-Oto）拥有独特的轻型反射和透明翅膀，此前已被证明比目前的光学材料轻17倍。太阳能聚光器（如为聚焦太阳光而设计的放大镜）是一项正在发展中的技术，它可以利用廉价的玻璃或塑料光学元件将太阳光集中到光伏板上（这些聚光器光伏系统称为CPV系统）。这些系统可以减少所需的昂贵的大量开采光伏材料的数量，同时保持总功率输出。然而，CPV可能很麻烦，因此通过仿生学将聚光光伏（光学+太阳能电池板）和天然轻质结构（蝴蝶翼纳米结构）结合起来，以获得太阳能技术的更高功率重量比，这是一个很好的机会。将可再生能源整合到智能电网、建筑、车辆和周边基础设施中，是减少碳排放和促进社会可持续生活方式的重要途径。这一复杂的挑战需要跨学科的研究和创新的设计。这项研究的目的是制造一种新型的生物启发光学，使聚光太阳能技术的功率重量比至少提高三倍。光学元件的表面结构对光的重定向和吸收有重要影响。微结构光学和涂层在提高CPV器件的功率输出和可靠性方面表现出了回报，但减轻重量的设计需要探索。菲涅耳透镜——一种已经很轻的凸透镜的截短版——只是随着轻质聚甲基丙烯酸甲酯（PMMA）的发现才开始流行起来，使它们更便宜、更实用。这是CPV在其早期的一个突破，并鼓励进一步的突破，包括新的减重方法与特定的浓缩器设计相匹配，如本文所提出的。这将在纳米、微观和宏观的工程水平上完成，以获得最佳性能，并确保产出和影响。生产高性能轻质CPV板，比目前的PV板更谨慎，甚至无形地集成到建筑物中是最终目标。该奖学金概述了理论和实验方法，重点关注材料和制造特性，并辅以工业合作和开发，以表彰这一开创性研究的广泛影响。像这样的跨学科研究将首先为太阳能、光学、制造、纳米技术和生物学等学科提供新的解决方案和理解，但也会通过与艺术家和公司的合作，将公众对能源的看法纳入其中，以增加这项研究的影响，并展示和鼓励跨学科研究本身。

Nature has optimised structures over billions of years through natural selection, a process which will forever exceed any 'trial and error' optimisation routine carried out by ourselves. Engineers can learn much from these achievements. The Cabbage white (Pieris brassicae) and Glasswing (Greta-Oto) butterflies have uniquely lightweight reflective and transparent wings which has been previously proven to be 17x lighter than current optical materials. Solar Concentrators (such as magnifying lenses designed for focusing the suns light) are a developing technology, which can utilise cheap glass or plastic optics to concentrate sunlight onto photovoltaic panels (these Concentrator photovoltaic systems are called CPV systems). These systems can reduce the amount of expensive heavily mined photovoltaic material required whilst maintaining the overall power output. CPV's can however be cumbersome, and so there lies a great opportunity to marry these disciplines of concentrator photovoltaics (optics+Solar panels) and natural lightweight structures (butterfly wing nanostructures) via biomimicry to gain significantly higher power-to-weight ratios for solar energy technology. Renewable energy, integrated into smart grids, buildings, vehicles and surrounding infrastructures, is an important pathway to reducing carbon emissions and advancing a sustainable lifestyle within society. This complex challenge demands interdisciplinary research and innovative design.This fellowship aims to manufacture novel bio-inspired optics capable of at least tripling the power-to-weight ratio of concentrator solar energy technology. The surface structure of optics has significant effects on the light redirection and absorption. Micro-structured optics and coatings have shown rewards of increased power output and reliability for CPV devices but reduced weight designs require exploring. Fresnel lenses -an already lighter truncated version of convex lenses- only became popular with the discovery of lightweight poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), making them more affordable and practical. This was a breakthrough for CPV in its very early years, and encourages further breakthroughs to entail new weight reduction methods matched to specific concentrator designs, as proposed here. This will be done on a nano, micro and macro level of engineering to obtain optimal performance and ensure outputs and impact. The production of high performing lightweight CPV panels which are more discreet than current PV panels and even invisibly integrated into buildings is the ultimate objective. This fellowship outlines theoretical and experimental methods, with strong focuses on materials and manufacturing characterisation aided by industrial collaboration and exploitation to credit the wide-spread impact of this pioneering research. Interdisciplinary research such as this will provide new solutions and understanding to firstly the disciplines of solar energy, optics, manufacturing, nanotechnology and biology but also branching off to incorporate the public perceptions of energy through collaborations with artists and companies to increase the impact of this research as well as showcasing and encouraging interdisciplinary research itself.