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This is very interesting!

"it could lead to a fully self-powered solid-state image sensor that produces a useful resolution and framerate"

In this case would it be able to output colors?

Color just means putting red, green and red filters in front of the pixels in some pattern and so it is definitely not a principle problem but you will lose a large part of the light spectrum for every pixel and therefore harvest a lot less energy.

In theory, you could put the filters on for just a fraction of the time to measure the colors, and spend most of the time collecting all the light. I'm not sure how to do that and stay low power.

You could have separate smaller color sensing pixels, using only a fraction of the surface area.

ETA: There are also transparent solar panels which only absorb UV. If that were tuned for visible colors, you could have three transparent layers over an ordinary panel, and maybe not lose anything.

Use a lens and prism to gather incoming photons, split by wavelength, then harvest and record their intensity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com