New LCDs could power future smartphones

Now we’re talking – a smartphone with an LCD display that has built-in photovoltaic technology, letting it juice up your phone without even having to plug it into a nearby power outlet, now how about that? This is a new form of technology developed by researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, where this novel concept will harvest and recycle energy for electronic devices. Basically, the LCD display will come with integrated photovoltaic polarizers that enable it to convert ambient light and sunlight into what else – electricity.

The UCLA Engineering team came up with a new kind of energy-harvesting polarizer for LCDs known as a polarizing organic photovoltaic, where it is capable of boosting the function of an LCD through working simultaneously as a polarizer, in addition to being a photovoltaic device and an ambient light or sunlight photovoltaic panel.

Since a device’s backlight will consume around 80% to 90% percent of the device’s power, up to 75% of generated light is lost via the polarizers. When you use a polarizing organic photovoltaic LCD instead, it would do its bit to recover much of that unused energy.