Light-driven actuators
that directly convert light into mechanical work have attracted significant
attention due to their wireless advantage and ability to be easily
controlled. However, a fundamental impediment to their application
is that the continuous motion of light-driven flexible actuators usually
requires a periodically switching light source or the coordination
of other additional hardware. Here, for the first time, continuous
flapping-wing motion under sunlight is realized through the utilization
of a simple nanocrystalline metal polymer bilayer structure without
the coordination of additional hardware. The light-driven performance
can be controlled by adjusting the grain size of the upper nanocrystalline
metallic layer or selecting metals with different thermodynamic parameters.
The achieved highest frequency of flapping-wing motion is 4.49 Hz,
which exceeds the frequency of real butterfly wings, thus informing
the further development of sunlight-driven bionic flying animal robotics
without external energy consumption. The flapping-wing motion has
been used to realize a light-driven whirligig, a light-driven sailboat,
and photoelectric energy harvesting. Furthermore, the flexible bilayer
actuator features the ability to be driven by light and electricity,
low-power actuation, a large deflection, fast actuation speed, long-time
stability, strong design ability, and large-area facile fabrication.
The bilayer film considered herein represents a simple, general, and
effective strategy for preparing photoelectric-driven flexible actuators
with target performances and informs the standardization and industrial
application of flexible actuators in the future.
Antimony selenide (Sb2Se3) thin films are attractive light‐absorbing materials for low‐cost and highly efficient thin‐film solar cells. Optimizing columnar growth of the grains and the proper hole concentration will be very helpful for improving the efficiency of Sb2Se3 thin‐film solar cells. In this paper, a monoatomic layer of Al2O3 prepared by the atomic layer deposition (ALD) method is used to increase the hole concentration of the Sb2Se3 film. The increase in the hole concentration is mainly due to the suppression of n‐type defects, such as Vse, or the increase in p‐type defects, such as Vsb. In addition, a simple and environmentally friendly oxygen plasma method is used to modify the CdS film to induce ordered columnar growth of the Sb2Se3 film deposited by the rapid thermal evaporation (RTE) method. Finally, an oxygen plasma treatment on CdS and a monoatomic Al2O3 layer covering the Sb2Se3 was combined to fabricate a solar cell with a new structure, FTO/CdS/P‐Sb2Se3/P+‐Sb2Se3/Al2O3/Au, and its efficiency was increased from 2.48% to 6.7%. These simple, nontoxic, and industrially applicable methods provide potential avenues for preparing low‐cost and highly efficient solar cells.
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