Playing loud pop music boosts output of
solar panels by 40%
From: ClickGreen staff, ClickGreen,
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Playing loud pop and
rock music improves the performance of solar cells, according to new research
from scientists at Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London.
The high frequencies and
pitch found in pop and rock music cause vibrations that enhanced energy
generation in solar cells containing a cluster of 'nanorods', leading to a 40
per cent increase in efficiency of the solar cells.
The researchers grew
billions of tiny rods (nanorods) made from zinc oxide, then covered them with
an active polymer to form a device that converts sunlight into electricity.
Using the special
properties of the zinc oxide material, the team was able to show that sound
levels as low as 75 decibels (equivalent to a typical roadside noise or a
printer in an office) could significantly improve the solar cell performance.
"After
investigating systems for converting vibrations into electricity this is a
really exciting development that shows a similar set of physical properties can
also enhance the performance of a photovoltaic," said Dr Steve Dunn,
Reader in Nanoscale Materials from Queen Mary's School of Engineering and
Materials Science.
Scientists had
previously shown that applying pressure or strain to zinc oxide materials could
result in voltage outputs, known as the piezoelectric effect. However, the
effect of these piezoelectric voltages on solar cell efficiency had not
received significant attention before.
"We thought the
sound waves, which produce random fluctuations, would cancel each other out and
so didn't expect to see any significant overall effect on the power
output," said James Durrant, Professor of Photochemistry at Imperial
College London, who co-led the study.
"The key for us was
that not only that the random fluctuations from the sound didn't cancel each
other out, but also that some frequencies of sound seemed really to amplify the
solar cell output - so that the increase in power was a remarkably big effect
considering how little sound energy we put in."
"We tried playing
music instead of dull flat sounds, as this helped us explore the effect of
different pitches. The biggest difference we found was when we played pop music
rather than classical, which we now realize is because our acoustic solar cells
respond best to the higher pitched sounds present in pop music," he concluded.
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