At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), researchers have created an electricity-producing power generator from glass. This could form the basis for energy production technologies that can be integrated into windows, the report said on Monday.
To do this, the scientists irradiated tellurite glass with a so-called femtosecond laser, which emits light pulses with a duration in the femtosecond range, that is, only a few quadrillionths of a second.
This resulted in nanometer-sized crystals of tellurium and tellurium oxide, two semiconductor materials, forming in the glass, the researchers discovered. And a semiconductor exposed to daylight can generate electricity.
Stable conversion of light to electricity
This created patterns on the glass surface that are photoconductive, ie can convert light into electrical energy. When light passes through this glass, electricity is generated. This conversion of light into electricity remained stable for months, the researchers report in the journal ‘Physical Review Applied’.
‘Nearing the alchemists’ dream’
“Essentially we transform materials into something else, which may come close to the alchemists’ dream,” said research leader Yves Bellouard in the EPFL statement. “The interesting thing about this technique is that no additional materials are required for the process.”
Source: Krone
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