Resumen de Sparks fly when solar cells dig that funky beat
Some solar cells convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently when loud music is played to them--as long as it is pop rather than classical. Traditional silicon-based solar cells convert sunlight into electricity efficiently, but they can be awkward to work with and expensive to produce. So Steve Dunn at Queen Mary University in London and James Durrant at Imperial College London have been experimenting with zinc oxide, which is much cheaper and can be made into thin, flexible films. The only drawback is that its efficiency is just 1.2%, a small fraction of what silicon is capable of. To improve this, Dunn and Durrant took advantage of another of zinc oxide's properties. Nanoscale rods of the material wobble in response to mechanical stress--such as the vibrations produced by sound--and generate an electric field.
