Fly Eyes Used For Solar Cells

disco_tracy writes "Researchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber. The result was a master template that retained those useful nanoscale features and can be used to make solar cells."

Re:That's cool and all but

[raving griff]

The process merely creates a template which is then used to create the cells. Therefore, only enough fly eyes to create the template (theoretically one) are required to build an entire line of solar cells.

Re: automated fly cornea removal?

[macraig]

How hard is it to remove a fly's cornea, and can the process be automated from a cloud of flies?

Not hard, and yes: winged micro-sharks with lasers. Genentech is working on them right now.

Re:So, its the shape ...

[FooAtWFU]

What part of "The result was a master template" makes you think that they need a continual supply of eyes?

Re:man...peta's gonna have a heart-attack

[Fred Foobar]

Last time I checked, insects were in the animal kingdom, so PETA should still have "jurisdiction" over them.