神奇的新科技：用影子发电

这听起来好像是科幻电影里的东西，但最近公布的通过阴影效应发电是真实存在的实物装置。

这个吸引人的概念能帮助我们改变可再生能源在室内产生的方式。

通过阴影效应发电利用明暗对比来发电，它是由硅晶片上的一系列薄金片组成，放置在软塑料底座上。

The SEG uses the contrast between darkness and light to produce electricity. It's made up of a series of thin strips of gold film on a silicon wafer, placed on top of a flexible plastic base.

尽管阴影通常会给可再生太阳能生产造成问题，但在这儿它们实际上被用来持续发电。据其开发人员介绍，这种技术比一般的太阳能电池生产成本更低，产生的功率很小，可用于移动设备等。

Whereas shadows are usually a problem for renewable solar energy production, here they're actually harnessed to keep on generating power. The technology - which is cheaper to produce than a typical solar cell, according to its developers - produces small amounts of power and could be used in mobile gadgets, for example.

新加坡国立大学材料科学家Tan Swee Ching说：“阴影无处不在，我们经常以为它的存在是理所当然的。在传统的光电应用中，稳定光源被用来给设备供电，人们不喜欢影子的存在，因为它降低了设备的性能。”

"Shadows are omnipresent, and we often take them for granted," says materials scientist Tan Swee Ching, from the National University of Singapore (NUS). "In conventional photovoltaic or optoelectronic applications where a steady source of light is used to power devices, the presence of shadows is undesirable, since it degrades the performance of devices.

“在这项工作中，我们利用了影子产生的明暗对比，把它当做间接能源。明暗对比使阴影部分和被照亮部分之间有电压差，产生电流。这种在阴影中获取能量的新概念前所未有。”

"In this work, we capitalised on the illumination contrast caused by shadows as an indirect source of power. The contrast in illumination induces a voltage difference between the shadow and illuminated sections, resulting in an electric current. This novel concept of harvesting energy in the presence of shadows is unprecedented."