In the right conditions, an emulsion of these molecules will organise itself into small spheres, known as vesicles, that contain part of the liquid the phospholipids were suspended in.
The fix, according to a team at MIT, is self-assembling (and therefore self-repairing) solar cells made up of a synthetic molecular soup containing phospholipids that, when mixed with a solution, attach themselves to a series of carbon nanotubes for alignment.