Published 21-09-2015

NEW TRANSPARENT BATTERY THAT CHARGES ITSELF WITH SUNLIGHT

21-09-2015

Japanese researchers have developed a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that can charge itself using sunlight with no solar cell required.

The working prototype was demonstrated at the Innovation Japan 2015 trade show in Tokyo recently.

The research team hopes to see the technology integrated into a ‘smart window’ that can act as both a large rechargeable battery and a photovoltaic cell all at once.

The team, led by Mitsunobu Sato, professor at the Department of Applied Physics at Kogakuin University in Japan, announced the development of the device nearly two years ago.

They have since been working toward a battery-integrated window that can store energy from sunlight while also changing its structure automatically to provide a tint during the day. 

When the battery is exposed to sunlight, it becomes tinted to about 30 percent light transmittance, and this allows the energy to be captured more efficiently, says Bob Yirka at techxplore. 

"The trick in getting them to be nearly transparent is in making them really thin - the electrodes are just 80 nm and 90 nm," he says, "After discharge, the team reports that light transmittance rises to approximately 60 percent." 

How did they make the electrodes so thin? Back in 2013, the main component of the electrolyte for the battery's positive electrode was lithium iron phosphate, and for the electrolyte used for the negative electrode, they used lithium titanate and lithium hexafluorophosphate – both of which are commonly used in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

For the prototype that was put on display in Tokyo last month, they altered the transparent oxides used for the negative electrode to achieve incredibly thin, transparent electrodes.

While they’re yet to publish details on what these changes were, they were able to facilitate charging via sunlight or other bright sources of illumination.

In testing, the team reports an output from the battery of 3.6 volts, and say they managed to successfully complete 20 charge/discharge cycles. 

Sato and his team are looking at the prospect of “smart windows” with the new technology.

Another possibility is self-charging smartphone screens made from transparent lithium-ion batteries. 

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