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Artificial vision

Solar cells for the blind

Electronic implants have been used to restore visual function lost as a result of retinal degeneration. Combining subretinal high-pixel-density arrays with optically powered serial photovoltaic sensors may alleviate some of the difficulties associated with today's devices, which rely on implanted arrays and inductive coils.

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Figure 1: Top: Sketch illustrating the epiretinal (blue), subretinal (yellow) and suprachoroidal (green) approaches to artificial vision.
Figure 2: The subretinal photodiode array of Mathieson et al.

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Correspondence to Eberhart Zrenner.

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Zrenner, E. Solar cells for the blind. Nature Photon 6, 344–345 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.114

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