Recharging your phone, tablet or laptop device is one of the main bugbears of our increasingly tech-intensive society. As we all rush around, trying to find a convenient charging point becomes a daily mission. But imagine a day where you can charge your devices using just the light coming through a window.

A team of researchers over in Japan have begun developing a battery of the future which is transparent and can charge itself using the power of the sun. An article over on the Nikkei Technology website says that the group,led by Mitsunobu Sato- the President of Kogakuin University, has developed a battery that is transparent and rechargeable. They showed off the battery at the Innovation Japan exhibition 2015 in Tokyo.

The battery was created by taking materials such as lithium titanate and lithium hexafluorophosphate for the negative electrode and lithium iron phosphate for the positive electrode and modifying them. These ingredients are already part of batteries that we use in our devices every day. You can expose those elements to sunlight and if you make them thin enough they become transparent.

They are hoping that one day these batteries could become part of windows for homes and offices which would allow them to store energy and run all sorts of smart applications. It could even become part of your phone, allowing you to charge your phone whilst you sit at your desk by the window and work. Whilst it is still in the early stages of development, Microsynthesis looks forward to using it as part of our daily lives one day in the future.