SOLAR!

Would solar panels work under our skin? Just a question for a series of mods I want to do.
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  • Yes and no. I performed the wet work when Amal was testing this out. I know theres a thread about the results somewhere or you could get a hold of dangerous things for more info.
  • In even shorter, no. Not enough light gets through to be worth it. It would work as a detector to let the implant know you're in light but otherwise not useful for power generation except maybe as an emergency backup that requires you sit in the sun for hours on end.
  • This was actually the same issue that people bring up with working on a human chlorophyll hack. We just don't have enough surface area to active mass ratio.

    On top of that, one of the important aspects of our skin is to stop icky terrible dna breaking sunlight through to our delicate jelly bits.

    Of course, it needed to be tested. Props to @Amal for letting Cass stick a solar panel in him in the name of science.

    This also doesn't mean that there isn't an option somewhere here, it's just not the "cram a solar panel in your meat bits" option...
  • What if you where to surgically remove a few layers of skin, out in a lightweight bendable solar panel, and grow some skin without melanin?
  • Well I though the results were poor, but Tim cannon disagree and had some ideas to boost performancE. I have no doubt that we could use a more effective panel, circuit etc. Also, while red light was used, panels specifically suited to nir wavelengths I believe exist. There are options. I don't think sunlight is one though.
  • The one way I could see this work is if the panel was sensitive to a frequency that easily passed through skin. Then we could use it as a wireless charging method if we had a flashlight of sorts that emitted that wavelength. Sort've like the send and receiver coils for the usual methods of charging big implants. But otherwise use only as a sensor. If you remove the layers, they'll just grow back. You can't just grow some skin without melanin, that takes a fair amount of modification pre growth which is expensive to say the least. And those cells which are exposed to the light are now at greater risk of genetic damage from the light. 
  • I don't recall whether it was @glims or @chironex, but I know one of you had some experience in the nanotechnology field. I'm still doing research on the fundamental principles of solar cells, but do you think it would be possible to create a nanoscale "Solar panel" engineered to reside in the epidermis, that would only stay connected to living tissue, and pull itself deeper to avoid being lost with the dying cells on the exterior of the epidermis? Or just park them in the membrane between the dermis and the epidermis.
  • The problem with solar panels is we currently don't have the tech to make them very efficient. There are better varieties coming out every day but there's not much that's all that great out yet. Also they work on a the principle of surface area. If you're shrinking it down you aren't really making a more useful thing you're just losing out on surface area. Sure you could make oens that are thinner or more flexible but past a point there's a reason we're not solar powered as is. You just can't get enough energy from it.
  • So, correct me if I'm wrong, but solar cells work almost like radiation shielding, in that you need a certain amount of material before the photons colliding with them interact with the material? 
  • @TheGreyKnight that's not an issue due to the general size of an implant compared to the couple of nm you need.
    Main problem remains (as chironex pointed out) the surface area.
    Quick followup on that:
    Solar power from the sun is very roughly 1kW/m² or about 0.1W/cm².
    Given the small size we could afford higher quality cells made from GaAs instead of Si, still gives a maximum efficiency of about 40% under ideal conditions. We don't have those but let's assume a best case here. Down to about 0.04W/cm² and let's say a 16mm diameter panel (about 2.5 cm² Area) leaves you a whopping 100mW peak (not implanted yet).
    Now i'm pulling in some numbers from random papers but bear with me. Light transmission for the eye-lid in the red spectrum part is about 5 to 6% (blue/yellow/green is far worse). Makes about 5mW.

    So even if you get pretty awesome electronics behind it to harvest all the energy without loss. You'd get about 100J of energy per day and a sunburn. Jerking+Piezo based harvesting should get you better results and a more pleasant experience. Btw, same energy can be transmitted via inductive charging in just 20 seconds.
  • I am a NABCEP certified photovoltaic tech. I am NOT an engineer or electrician. The short is no. The voltage produced from a standard Mono/Polycrystaline solar cell would not be enough to really do anything especially under the skin. A thin film solar cell would most likely be useless. If your question pertains to powering some type of implant my opinion is we are better off exploring wireless charging options.
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