If imitation is the highest form of flattery, there should be plenty of blushing moths. A group of scientists is working on a new way to create a structure similar to the moth eye, albeit with several important differences, to build a better solar cell.

Unlike human eyes, the compound moth’s eyes have a collection of miniature posts across their surface.

These posts allow the moth to absorb a wide range of light without reflecting it back. This prevents the “moth in the headlights” appearance, enabling the insect to blend in without sending a reflection predators might notice.

While Lord Rayleigh worked out the mathematics for why the moth eye geometry eliminates reflection in the 1800s, a team at Brookhaven National Laboratory has come up with a new approach to creating an anti-reflective silicon.

“Our advance is in coming up with a tricky new way” to make a silicon surface that absorbs instead of reflects light, said Chuck Black, a scientist and group leader at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at BNL. “We think it has practical advantages in applying this” to things like solar cells or even, some day, anti-reflective windshields on cars or windows in buildings.

Companies have been using multilayer coatings to increase the ability of silicon solar cells to absorb light. By etching a nanoscale texture onto the material, researchers including Black and Atikur Rahman, a postdoctoral researcher, were able to create an anti-reflective surface that works as well as multilayer coatings, while outperforming single antireflective film by about 20 percent.

The researchers coated the top of a silicon solar cell with a substance Black has worked with for more than 15 years, called a block copolymer. The advantage to this substance is that it can self-organize into a surface pattern with dimensions of only about 10 nanometers. This pattern enabled the development of posts that are similar to those of a moth’s eyes, even though the features in their structures are much smaller than those in the insect eye.

The challenge in trying to reduce reflections is that sunlight has a wide range of colors at different wavelengths. Substances designed to absorb one color won’t be as effective at capturing a different one.

That’s where the moth enters the picture.

“Nature has learned how to create this anti-reflection,” by using spikes, Black said. “This promotes anti-reflection not just in one but in all wavelengths of light.”

The way this works is somewhat akin to the proverbial frog in a pot of water. In the frog story, a frog sitting in a pot of water that slowly heats up doesn’t jump out of the water even when it’s boiling because it’s adjusted to the changing temperature. Similarly, these spikes draw light of different wavelengths in because the distances between them are all smaller than the wavelength of light. The light effectively reacts to their average properties, Black explained.

When the light travels through these spikes, which are not cylindrical but, rather are thinner at the top and flair at the bottom, it reacts as if it hits something that is a combination of something small and insignificant and air. As the light travels towards the silicon surface, it interacts less with air and more with the spike, where it becomes absorbed by the thicker base before it can reflect back out.

“You’re softening this transition between air and whatever you’re trying to couple the light into,” Black said. Instead of a sharp boundary between the air the light is traveling through and the surface, the spikes ease that interaction, gradually capturing the light.

To demonstrate its effect, Black held a small photograph of his lab above a reflecting surface in which a small square is coated with the anti-reflective material. In the reflection, the square with the anti-reflective substance appears black.

Black and Rahman, who was the lead author on the study, published their results in Nature Communications. They don’t know whether this approach is more economical or efficient than the current multilayer coating for solar cells. They are working with external partners to understand the economic or performance advantages of this approach, he said.

Black and his wife Theresa Lu, who is a physician scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery, live in Manhattan with their two primary school children, Marina and Charlotte.

As for his work, Black and Rahman filed a patent for this technology last year. “It’s something we’re very proud of,” he said.

In the blistering heat of the summer, when the three H’s — hazy, hot and humid — dominate the weather forecast, people gravitate toward the refreshing stream of comfort from an air conditioner. Similarly, when a polar vortex descends, people seek the warmth from a heater to help unfurl frozen fingers.

Ya Wang, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University, is working on a type of vent that will direct the soothing air toward people wherever they are, whether they’re cozying up on a couch, dropping down at a desk, or resting in a recliner.

Teaming up with professor Lei He and professor Qibing Pei at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wang and her partners recently received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a proposal that will make the vents for these air conditioners and heaters more efficient, lowering the cost to heat or cool a room.

Wang and her collaborators are developing a vent that will enable the air conditioner or heater to work less hard at changing the temperature in the parts of a room where a filing cabinet, a ficus tree, or a fireplace is, targeting the soothing air at the room’s occupants.

The new vent could generate 30 percent savings through such directed flow, SBU estimates. “We can regulate the airflow velocity by a special design and adjust the temperature to whatever is needed,” Wang said. “This will adjust automatically to regulate the airflow velocity back to the occupant.”

Wang is the principal investigator on the project, which means she collaborated on the idea and put it together.

Unlike academic funds, which require researchers to conduct experiments and produce data, this grant was awarded to produce a product.

Aside from coordinating the effort, Wang will also focus on developing the harvesters, which will provide a power supply for the on-board sensors and actuators. Wang and her collaborators estimate a cost of less than $20 per unit, with a $60 per year per unit electricity savings.

Jeff Ge, chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at SBU, said Wang is one of six new faculty members hired in the past two years. He said she received positive reviews for her research and teamwork.

“The work of Dr. Wang and her colleagues to enhance energy efficiency is one of the most important research endeavors for our state and society,” Samuel Stanley, president of SBU, said in a statement.

Apart from her work on the new vent, Wang spends about a quarter of her time teaching, 65 percent of her time on academic research, advising graduate and undergraduate students, and about 10 percent of her time in community service. She participates in a seminar for women in science and engineering, and encourages women to enter these fields.

She is working through other grants on energy-related research. With the U.S. Department of Transportation, she is developing ways to tap into the vibrational energy from subway trains and from the wind these cars generate to power sensors that monitor the track. As it stands, the DOT sends people to the tracks to make sure they are functioning correctly. By reusing other forms of energy, the department can create a more extensive monitoring system that won’t involve as many potentially hazardous trips onto the tracks for transit workers.

Wang said soldiers in the field often carry a few hundred tons of batteries to power electronics and communication systems. She is working with the U.S. Navy to generate power by walking or running. To be sure, that won’t provide all the necessary energy, but it can supply some of the power for electronics or communications.

A Smithtown resident, Wang woke up one night to the sounds of her smoke alarm battery indicating it needed replacing.

She’s working on a circuit that will use vibrational energy for the detector. She has a one-year old nephew and sees an opportunity to create batteries that tap into vibrational energy or the temperature difference between a toy and the air to provide power.

With all her interests in energy for commercial applications, Wang would be a compelling candidate to work in industry. Why, then, did she choose to come to SBU, an academic home where she’s worked for 18 months?

“My dream, since I was a kid,” in Shandong Province in China, was “to be a teacher,” she said. “I enjoy working with new students.”

The solar panels on his house in Dix Hills help provide about a third of the energy he and his family use. When he drives around Long Island and sees plumes of smoke from power plants, he looks to see where it’s heading.

Energy and environmental conservation aren’t just hobbies or personal philosophies ­— they are part of what Vasilis Fthenakis teaches as a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Fthenakis helped improve the environmental impact of solar cells, working several years ago to eliminate lead, which can be dangerous to humans and to the environment, from the manufacture of solar panels. He has helped guide the industry to minimize the environmental, health and safety risks of solar cells.

Fthenakis recently returned from a trip to Chile, where he is encouraging the use of solar panels in a country that is often bathed in sunlight. “It’s the best place in the world for solar,” he said. It rarely rains and most of the land that is available for installation is up on high altitudes, he said.

Fthenakis, who was born and raised in Greece, has worked for about a year with several Chilean organizations to discuss the benefits and realities of solar energy.

Chile now imports coal, natural gas and diesel fuel. If the country produced its own energy, it could cut its energy costs, he said. It could take up to five years to see significant effects on the national economy, he estimated.

The South American nation has been ramping up its solar efforts. A few years ago, Chile generated no power from sunlight. That rose to 10 megawatts in 2012, 189 megawatts in August last year and currently stands at about 500 megawatts.

“We’re talking about tremendous growth,” Fthenakis said. Chile has a plan to boost renewable energy, which includes solar, wind and some hydroelectric plants, to 12 percent by 2020 and 20 percent by 2025. Fthenakis believes solar will be the biggest constituent in the mix.

While Chile doesn’t have the same oil, gas, coal and nuclear lobbies as the United States does, it does present some challenges to boosting solar energy, including inertia, Fthenakis said. “Most people don’t want to change,” he added, including people in other countries around the world.

In 2008, Fthenakis and two other authors wrote a cover story for Scientific American, titled “A Solar Grand Plan,” about the benefits and reliability of solar energy. At the time, solar was contributing 0.1 percent of energy to the capacity in the U.S. That number has climbed to 2 percent.

The article was translated into 11 languages and has raised his profile around the world. He has also traveled to Abu Dhabi to discuss the feasibility of tapping into the sun-driven renewable resource. As with Chile, these interactions have developed through a combination of approaches from other countries and an interest on Fthenakis’ part.

In addition to his work at BNL, Fthenakis teaches two environmental courses at Columbia: Air Pollution Prevention and Control, and Photovoltaics Systems Engineering and Sustainability.

As for his research at BNL, Fthenakis said he is involved in all aspects and impacts in evaluating energy alternatives. That can include affordability, which addresses direct and hidden costs, resource availability and environmental impact.

Fthenakis has been working at BNL for 34 years, where he has earned the respect of his colleagues. He is “a world-renowned expert in issues of safety of photovoltaic systems and, more broadly, in issues of deployment, efficiency, practicality and the like,” said Stephen Schwartz, a senior scientist in the Biological, Environmental & Climate Sciences Department at BNL, who has known Fthenakis for about 20 years.

Fthenakis’ wife, Christina, is an executive director in research and development at Estée Lauder Companies. The couple have a daughter, Antonia, who is doing her residency in dermatology at Stony Brook and a 21-year-old son Michael who is exploring his career options.

Fthenakis said he and his family visit beaches on Long Island or wherever they travel. When they find litter, they help dispose of it in a safe place.

“Solar energy and the environment defines the way I live,” Fthenakis said.