Glass has become the primary material used on the surface of our modern commercial buildings. Our skyscrapers glisten as sunlight reflects off their smooth outer surfaces. Inside the building, floor-to-ceiling windows accentuate views across cities and flood our offices with natural light. We pay a heavy price for this illuminating, shiny beauty however; with sunlight comes heat in these towering greenhouses, which means we need energy intensive cooling to keep temperatures at a human friendly level. In a world striving for energy efficiency, big windows, especially in sunny places, may seem like an unnecessary luxury, but a recent breakthrough is promising the best of both worlds. Researchers at Princeton University have developed a self-powered smart window that is both easy and inexpensive to apply to existing windows. The system features solar cells that selectively absorb near-ultraviolet (near-UV) light, which makes the windows completely self-powered. “Sunlight is a mixture of electromagnetic radiation made up of near-UV […]