Windows become transparent solar panels with added nanoparticles

By Donna Lu

These transparent solar panels have a brown or grey tint

UbiQd

Ordinary glass panels can act as solar panels when a layer of nanoparticles is sandwiched between two panes, which could help take advantage of solar energy in cities where space for solar panels may be limited.

“If we’ve done our job, no one will even know that they’re there,” says Hunter McDaniel at UbiQD, a materials manufacturing firm in the US. He and his colleagues have developed transparent solar panels that are indistinguishable from regular glass.

Test installations, involving panels that are one square metre in size, are …