This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
In the series "A Modest Proposal," my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real.
At times a new piece of technology comes along that is so novel that you want to see it in a device to use it but scratch your head as to what that device might be. Such is the case, I think, with the transparent battery.
Scientists have already created similarly clear video displays, touch screens, microchips and solar cells. Now researchers have developed transparent, flexible lithium-ion batteries, the kind now popular in consumer electronics because of how much power they can store. Altogether, such technologies raise the prospect of entirely see-through mobile devices.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5boywxr8ot4
The question, then, is would anyone ever want a see-through mobile device? If you wanted to power, say, a pair of augmented reality glasses, you could have batteries hidden in the frames of the glasses that do not need to be transparent. An opaque battery looks even more attractive given the fact that transparent batteries do not seem able to store as much energy, although transparent batteries over the lenses could supplement opaque batteries in the frames to give such glasses longer staying power.
I don't think a transparent smartphone or laptop would make sense. The virtue of those devices nowadays largely seems to me to lie in how powerful their processors are, and I'm guessing transparent electronics are less capable in that regard.
However, a key virtue of tablet computers — perhaps the key virtue — lies in displaying information. Having a transparent, flexible tablet computer might thus be very attractive. The one use I brainstormed that made any sense to me would be as a handheld augmented reality window. Perhaps they can replace traditional maps, or be a way to see how clothing might look on a person or see how a place might have looked in the past or might look in the future. Still, when it comes to such a tablet, I'd expect a frame around the see-through center that housed opaque batteries and other electronics to boost such its usefulness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxQZuo6pFUw
You can email me regarding A Modest Proposal attoohardforscience@gmail.comand follow the series on Twitter at #modestproposal.