The EPFL team, using tellurite glass produced by their Tokyo Tech colleagues, applied their expertise in femtosecond laser technology to alter the glass and study the laser’s effect. After etching a simple line pattern onto a 1 cm diameter tellurite glass and exposing it to UV light and the visible spectrum, Torun found it could generate a current consistently for months.
Bellouard expressed his excitement at the breakthrough, saying, “We’re locally turning glass into a semiconductor using light. We’re essentially transforming materials into something else, perhaps approaching the dream of the alchemist!”
This development may pave the way for windows to function as single-material light-harvesting and sensing devices in the future.
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