See through Technology

The day is not far away when we will be holding mobile phones that are light weight as well as transparent. Yes!!! The researchers at Oregon State University and Hewlett Packard have discovered entirely new class of materials provided by mother nature that can conduct electrically and are optically transparent, also are inexpensive and stable. The reason behind transparency is that the elements or compound absorbs all the colors in a given spectrum and does not reflect any.

Transparent Electronics is a science which is focused on producing invisible electronic circuitry. The motive to create a technology which is electrically conductive as well as optically transparent.Even, the imagination sounds exotic to ears.The materials are especially well suited for use in computer and video displays, photo-voltaic cells, and digital cameras . Private industry is working to identify applications for transparent semiconductors, and to develop prototypes of devices that can be useful in the real world.

Transparent conductors are neither 100% optically transparent nor metabolically conductive. From the band structure point of view, the combination of the two properties in the same material is contradictory: transparent material is an insulator which possesses completely filled valence and empty conduction bands; whereas metallic conductivity appears when the Fermi level lies within a band with a large density of states to provide high carrier concentration.

This appealing class of see through devices is still in  its research phase and could be used in creating highly portable e-paper computer display that could take the place of a monitor,transparent solar panel that could be attached directly to windows or skylights,flexible plastic display that can be applied to a vehicle windshield like a decal, allowing vital parameters such as speed, fuel level etc and obviously mobile phones, laptops etc.