Researchers have combined photovoltaics with LCD screens in a
way that could help bolster the battery life of cell phones,
UCLA announced Tuesday. By equipping the phones' LCD displays
with photovoltaic polarizers, researchers found they could
harvest not only the LCD's extra backlight energy, but also
ambient light and sunlight. Normal LCDs have two polarized
sheets with liquid crystal molecules between them that let
variable amounts of light pass through, depending on what's
being displayed on the screen. Light that is blocked or filtered
out is effectively wasted energy that can be harvested. With the
new energy harvesters, called polarizing organic photovoltaics,
installed in the LCDs, screens could start giving back to the
energy stores they greedily deplete all day. A device's
backlight consumes 80 to 90 percent of the device's power, the
researchers said, and as much as 75 percent of that is lost to
the polarizers; if the polarizers were photovoltaic, much of
that energy could be recovered. And not onl