If aesthetics is something that has ever made you reluctant to get solar panels installed, with their black silhouette which can stand out so prominently from a building, that concern may become a thing of the past.

A team of researchers from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has developed a facade for solar panels which can create a great array of colours.

Dr. Oliver Höhn, Dr. Thomas Kroyer and Andreas Wessels from Fraunhofer ISE, based in Freiburg set out to create solar panels which could blend seamlessly into a building, with a minimal loss of efficiency.

The MorphoColor coating technology creates solar modules with strong saturated colours, while still retaining 95% of the power output of an uncoated solar panel.

It was nature which inspired this innovative technology. In particular, the Blue Morpho Butterfly achieves a dazzling blue colour on its wings with their unique structure which diffracts and reflects light.

“The 3D photonic structures on a morpho butterfly’s wings allow for an intensive, angularly stable coloured impression thanks to a fundamentally low-loss interference effect,” explains Kroyer.

Basing their technology on this biological process, the research team created a similar coating for the back of glass coverings of solar panels using a vacuum process.

Depending on the fine structure, this method can be used to produce glass coverings in various colours, whilst retaining the solar panel’s efficiency.