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A study in the journal Nature Materials details the creation of a nanowire-based technology that absorbs solar energy at comparable levels to currently available systems while using only 1 percent of the silicon material needed to capture photons. Cynthia Graber reports
《自然材料》上一项研究详述了一项基于纳米线材技术的新发明----和当前技术相比，吸收太阳能的水平一样，但是只需要消耗1%的硅料来俘获光子。
Imagine a world where sunlight can be captured to produce electricity anywhere, on any surface. The makers of thin-film flexible solar cells imagine that world too. But a big problem has been the amount of silicon needed to harvest a little sunshine.
想想这样一个世界：在任何地方，任何表面，太阳光都可以被吸收以产生电能。薄膜柔性太阳能电池制造商也在构想这样的世界。但是有个大问题：为了吸收很少的太阳光，需要耗费大量的硅料。（注：高纯度硅料，成本高）
Now, researchers [led by Harry A. Atwater] at Caltech say they’ve designed a device* that gets comparable solar absorption while using just one percent of the silicon per unit area that current solar cells need. The work was published in the journal Nature Materials.
现在，加州理工的研究者们（领导是：Harry A. Atwater）说他们设计了一个装置（注1）取得同样的太阳能吸收水平，但每个单元只需要当前太阳能电池1%的硅料。成果发表在《自然材料》杂志上。
The research team tried silicon wire arrays instead of traditional silicon panels. These wires have been shown to do a good job converting sunlight to usable energy on the nanoscale. But the scientists had to create wires a thousand times longer.
研究团队尝试硅线阵列而不是传统的硅版。在纳米级别上，这些硅线可以很好的把太阳能转换成可用的能量。但是科学家们必须研发出1000倍长的线材。
Light bounces around within the wires and is eventually absorbed when it hits at the correct angle. But there was a problem: too much light was leaking out. Adding nanoparticles of alumina kept much more of the light scattering until it got absorbed. The result is a system that virtually matches silicon wafer light absorption and may be more efficient at converting light to electricity, while using a tiny fraction of the material.
光线在线材附近来回反射，当它恰好以某个角度入射，最终将被吸收。但是问题在于：大量的光线跑掉了。加入铝的纳米粒子使更多的光线散射直到它被吸收。结果是一个这样一个系统：只使用一丁点儿硅料，但它和硅片的吸收水平一样，也可能更有效的进行光电转换。
