Photoconductive circuits on glass developed

Photoconductive circuits have reportedly been created, where the circuit is directly patterned onto a glass surface.

The circuit was patterned onto the surface with a femtosecond laser light and was developed by an EPFL physicist.

The new technology may one day be useful for harvesting energy, while remaining transparent to light and using a single material.

The EPFL physicist in a collaboration with Tokyo Tech scientists, made the discovery that may one day turn windows into single material light-harvesting and sensing devices.

The results are published in PR Applied.

‘Tellurium being semiconducting, based on this finding we wondered if it would be possible to write durable patterns on the tellurite glass surface that could reliably induce electricity when exposed to light, and the answer is yes,’ explains Yves Bellouard who runs EPFL’s Galatea Laboratory. ‘An interesting twist to the technique is that no additional materials are needed in the process. All you need is tellurite glass and a femtosecond laser to make an active photoconductive material.’

Using tellurite glass produced by Tokyo Tech, the EPFL team brought their expertise in femtosecond laser technology to modify the glass and analyse the effect of the laser.

After exposing a simple line pattern on the surface of a tellurite glass 1 cm in diameter, it was reportedly found that it could generate a current when exposing it to UV light and the visible spectrum, and this, reliably for months.

‘It’s fantastic, we’re locally turning glass into a semiconductor using light,’ says Yves Bellouard. ‘We’re essentially transforming materials into something else, perhaps approaching the dream of the alchemist!’