Scientists invent transparent battery

Stanford researchers have invented a transparent lithium-ion battery that is also highly flexible, reports Physorg.

It is comparable in cost to regular batteries on the market today, with great potential for applications in consumer electronics.

Several companies have successfully created partially transparent gadgets such as digital photo frames and cellphones with see-through keyboards. However, fully transparent e-book readers or cellphones have remained largely in the realm of conceptual art due to one last missing puzzle piece.

According to MSN, a nanomaterials science and engineering researcher at Stanford University, Yi Cui, told MSN that if one looks at a battery electrode, it is black, it is not transparent.

Cui, who has used nanoscale manufacturing techniques for other battery breakthroughs, and his colleagues overcame this hurdle by fabricating a battery with visible parts below the resolution of human eyes.

To do this, they spin-coated a silicon substrate with nanoscale-sized, grid-like trenches that were filled with an active electrode material via capillary forces. “When the line widths of this grid is smaller than the size that your eye can resolve, they will look transparent,” Cui said.