The transmittance diminishment of solar cells,caused by dust accumulation is higher than 52.54% every year(2006 Energ.Convers.Manage.47 3192),which greatly reduces their overall efficiencies of power conversion.Any other strategy for improving the photovoltaic device cannot compensate for this loss caused by the dust.However,this critical issue has not received much attention.In this work,a kind of self-cleaning coating consisting of Zn O nanowire-silicon pyramid hierarchical structures is proposed to overc...