Transparent Batteries: Seeing Straight Through to the Future?

It sounds like something out of a cheesy science fiction movie, but thanks to new research led by Yi Cui, a professor of photon science at SLAC, transparent cell phones are one step closer to becoming a reality.

Several companies have successfully created partially transparent gadgets such as digital photo frames and cell phones with see-through keyboards. However, fully transparent e-book readers or cell phones have remained largely in the realm of conceptual art due to one last missing puzzle piece.

"If you want to make everything transparent, what about the battery?" said Cui, who is also an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and is renowned for his work with batteries.