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In the category of people making things you
didn't know you need, researchers at Stanford University have just created a
thin, flexible, totally transparent lithium-ion battery. It is about the size
and shape of a Listerine breath mint strip, and as clear as Glad Wrap.
According to an article on the university'
website, researchers were inspired to make a see-through
battery partially because they want transparent Apple products to be a
reality in the future.
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"I want to talk to Steve Jobs about
this. I want a transparent iPhone!" said Yi Cui, battery expert
extraordinaire and an associate professor of materials science at Stanford
who worked on the project.
Cui created the battery 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.
The challenge of making a battery
see-through is that certain key materials that make a battery work are
fundamentally not transparent, and no good transparent substitutes could be
found. The Stanford scientists found 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.
Here's how the Stanford story explains it:
"If something is smaller than 50
microns, your eyes will feel like it is transparent," said Yang, because
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.
The battery is not strong enough to power a
laptop yet, but it could power a camera. And Ciu is
optimistic that it won't be long before the battery gets stronger.
If you want to geek out, you can read more
about the crazy science that went into this battery here.
http://www.watoday.com.au/technology/sci-tech/the-transparent-battery-is-an-invisible-iphone-next-20110729-1i3is.html
Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/technology/sci-tech/the-transparent-battery-is-an-invisible-iphone-next-20110729-1i3is.html#ixzz1TVLb7GPF
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