A Window That Washes Itself

I don’t know about you, but I hate washing windows. I can never seem to get them streak free. Well, the good news is there may soon be a window that washes itself!

The technology break through comes to us from Tel Aviv University in Israel. A research team there has been working on a solution not to windows, but to solar panel efficiency issues. Solar panels do not convert the energy in sunlight very efficiently. Things get even worse when the panels get dirty. Since the panels tend to sit an angle, dust tends to accumulate on them fairly quickly.


The Tel Aviv researches have been focusing on a solution at the molecular level. In this case, the answer seems to be in the field of nanotechnology. The researches have found that they can grow peptide collections at the nano scale. These peptides can be organized to grow like a field of grass.

It should be noted that these peptides do not actually clean anything. Instead, they repel dust and dirt. Most material will just fall off. Any that accumulates will wash off naturally when a rain storm or artificial source of water hits it. This is considered to be a fairly significant, if unglamorous, breakthrough in solar technology.



While working on the technology, researches quickly realized that it had applications to any glass plane surface including practically any window. The window industry, as you might imagine, has taken a keen interest in the development of the technology particularly as it relates to large glass structures like skyscrapers.

So, how long will it be before we have a window that washes itself? Unless there is some unforeseen setback, the time span appears to be three to five years.

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