What inspired the researchers to make a see-through battery? Well, their desire to see transparent Apple products (a transparent iPhone) in the future.
The battery created by Yi Cui, a battery expert extraordinaire and an associate professor of materials science at Stanford; along with graduate student Yuan Yang, who is the first author of the paper "Transparent Lithium-ion Batteries," published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is a big step in realizing devices which are simply other-worldly.
The challenges faced by the researchers:
One of the main challenge in creating a see-through battery is that certain key materials that make a battery work are fundamentally not transparent. To surpass this challenge the researchers, devised a way around the hurdle by making the non-transparent parts of the battery so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. In the words of a Stanford-ite, “If something is smaller than 50 microns, your eyes will feel like it is transparent, as the maximum resolving power of the human eye is somewhere between 50 to 100 microns." Yang and Cui devised a mesh-like framework for the battery electrodes, with each "line" in the grid being approximately 35 microns wide. Light passes through the transparent gaps between the gridlines; because the individual lines are so thin, the entire meshwork area appears transparent.
Any limitations in the current prototype:
Yes. The battery developed is not strong enough to power a laptop yet. But can easily power a camera. But the creator duo is working on making the battery more stronger.
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