What can a solar engineer learn from butterflies?
Dr Katie Shanks is one of Art and Energy’s Directors, she is also a research fellow in the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) at the University of Exeter - Penryn Campus. Her expertise lies in optics but encompasses many contributing fields surrounding solar concentrator technology.
Katie has been awarded a 3-year fellowship investigating optical nanostructures within nature. Known for their beautiful wing patterns, butterflies, like all things within nature, are actually highly optimised systems tweaked over billions of years through evolution. Which firstly, makes them excellent partners to cheat from.
One particular butterfly for example, the cabbage white, has developed a unique way of quickly warming its flight muscles in the morning. It can be found holding its white wings in a V-shape, which, originally puzzled scientists, but now, has been identified as a form of solar concentration.
Solar concentrators are simply things like magnifying lenses or concave mirrors that focus sunlight onto a reduced area of photovoltaic (solar sensitive) material. This is similar to the sunbathing mirrors you may have seen in films and TV shows where people use them to increase the sun on their face and neck. These optics can reduce the costs of solar panels and even increase the efficiency; but integrating optics into new forms of solar panels produces heavy and bulky designs.
The butterfly’s wings are however the perfect solar concentrator; extremely lightweight and optimised for all weather conditions. Through my biomimicry (copying nature) research at the University of Exeter I have analysed the fascinating nanostructures responsible for the cabbage white’s highly reflective, lightweight and surprisingly durable wings. Initial testing has shown copying these nanostructures could improve the power to weight ratio of current solar panel technology by as much as 17 times!
My research delves into a variety of nano-fabrication techniques to develop a method to make enhanced solar technology that can be easily integrated into everyday structures such as smart cars, smart phones and of course smart buildings.
All of which are absolutely essential as we speed up our progress towards a sustainable carbon neutral future.
