Breakthrough glass generates energy: Car windows, mobile screens to charge batteries

The study has opened a new path for modularization research, which is essential for commercialization of transparent silicon solar cells.

Researchers have developed a new method that can directly charge a battery from a smartphone screen. Developed by a research team affiliated with UNIST, the method can directly supply energy from glass of buildings, cars, and mobile devices through transparent solar cells. The new type of transparent solar cell and module offers high efficiency and maintains glass-like colorless and transparent properties. The transparent solar cell secured colorless and transparentness by introducing an ‘all-back-contact’ design that places all the components of the solar cell on the back. It has achieved high efficiency and aesthetics that transparent solar cells must have at the same time.

The material is developed by Professor Kwanyong Seo and his research team at the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST. Called Seamless Modularization technology, the method eliminates gaps between devices without using metal wires. In the existing modularization method, the gap between devices and opaque metal wires have solved the problem of damaging the aesthetics of transparent solar cells. The newly developed 16 cm²-sized transparent solar cell module has high efficiency ranging from 20% to 14.7% in transmittance while maintaining aesthetics similar to that of a single device. It has also succeeded in charging a smartphone using natural sunlight. It also proved the possibility that a screen of a small mobile device can be used as an energy source, according to the study conducted at UNIST.

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