Smart Windows

As our fossil fuels on Earth are getting used up faster than it can reproduce. Scientists, inventors and various groups of people are getting their minds together to try and desperately resolve our fossil fuel crisis by turning to alternate energy sources.

The latest of these inventions being a smart window powered by oxygen that is able to tint itself blue and block sunlight that can overheat an interior. It could keep buildings cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

What’s more, the process that tints the window actually produces instead of using, a small amount of electricity, which could be harnessed to power electronics.

The window, developed by Professor Sun Xiaowei and colleagues at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, consists of two glass panes filled in between with an oxygen-carrying liquid electrolyte. Each pane is wrapped in a conductive coating with aluminium foil on one and an oxygen-sensitive blue dye on the other.

An electrical wire links the panes together, creating a circuit.

In a real-world application, the circuit could have an on and off switch. When on, the dye inside the panes would react with oxygen from the air and turn blue, blocking up to 50 percent of light.

“The window charges up and turns blue when there is oxygen present in the electrolyte in other words, it breathes,”says Sun.

When turned off, the dye would become transparent. In an experiment, the scientists added an LED light to the circuit to show that the electrochemical reaction of the dye could also provide energy to low-power electronics.

When the circuit between the two glass panes is opened, the dye reacts with the oxygen in the electrolyte and spontaneously turns blue, conversely, when the circuit is closed the process is reversed and the dye becomes transparent again in a matter of seconds.