Researchers Create A Transparent Battery Which Could Change The iPhone
July 28, 2011
Many iPhone users went crazy when Apple finally released the iPhone 4 in white. Imagine what they might do if Apple were to offer it in say … transparent? Sound goofy? It may not be all that far off.
According to Stanford University News, researchers have created a battery that is transparent and for use in consumer electronics. Many electronic devices have been created partially transparent, but none of them completely, mainly because of the battery.
Yi Cui, an associate professor at Stanford and Yuan Yang a Stanford graduate student, set out to create this transparent battery. Essential key components in a battery cannot be made transparent, so Cui and Yang had to come up with ways to make the non-transparent components invisible to the naked eye. "If something is smaller than 50 microns, your eyes will feel like it is transparent," said Yang. The maximum the human eye can see is between 50 to 100 microns.
After figuring out the right combination of materials, Cui and Yang were able to create a battery you can see through and have now filed a patent. When asked what kind of importance this battery might have, Cui had a couple of answers and one was very non-scientific: "It just looks cool. I want to talk to Steve Jobs about this. I want a transparent iPhone!"
The transparent battery is very flexible and it costs about as much as current batteries on the market. It unfortunately is only about half as powerful as current lithium-ion batteries. With cell phone battery life being important, some refinements will probably need to be made prior to marketing this product.
A transparent iPhone would be cool. Maybe it will be the new iPhone 7T, introduced on September 3, 2012. Personally, I think it would be better than white. How about you? Would you buy a transparent iPhone?
