Rock Music Boosts Solar Cell Performance

One of the biggest things that would boost acceptance of solar cells as a replacement source for electricity is a boost in their output. Guess what? According to a new study from Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College in London, music, particularly rock and pop music, boost the output of solar cells by almost 50 percent.

Solar cells, just like people, it turns out, appear to get an energy boost just by being exposed to the sounds. The high frequencies of pop and rock music cause vibrations that increased the energy generation of solar cells because of their clusters of nanorods. Scientists had already known that straining zinc oxide materials could increase voltage outputs, but the effect had not been tested extensively on solar cell efficiency.

The British researchers grew billions of zinc oxide nanorods and coated them with an active polymer that could convert sunlight into electricity. They discovered that when the solar cells were exposed to sound, the photovoltaic efficiency increased by as much as 45 percent. "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," study co-leader James Durrant says. "The key for us was 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."

The researchers noted significant improvement in solar cell performance with levels as low as 75 decibels, a sound level similar to busy street traffic. They didn't go as far as to compare the benefits of one band versus another, but did find that not all musical genres offered the same benefits. "We tried playing music instead of dull flat sounds, and the biggest difference we found was that when we played pop music rather than classical, our acoustic solar cells responded best to the higher pitched sounds present in pop music." Research is now focused on developing power sources for products that are already exposed to high-frequency acoustic vibrations, such as cars or air conditioners.