Organic solar cells in new energy harvesting concept

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 25 Nov 2011

Exclusive article from the latest issue of +Plastic Electronics: to read in full click here

A research team at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) may have come up with a lucrative application for organic photovoltaic (OPV) technology, by creating an energy harvesting device for integration into LCD screens.

Since starting OPV research in 2002, UCLA has transferred several patents to its OPV start- up company Solarmer Energy, to encourage commercial application. Yang Yang, professor at the university's California NanoSystems Institute, and his engineers at the UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed the novel concept of using OPVs to harvest energy from LCD backlights.

Polarisers

Such a device could potentially enable smartphones and other display-based electronic gadgets and appliances to convert ambient light, sunlight, and their own backlight into electricity. In an LCD structure polarisers, which are sandwich the liquid crystal layer, act as filters to direct the path of light, emitted from the backlight, so it is sent to the viewer's eyes in a linear way. Without polarisers an LCD screen would appear white to the viewer.

An LCD device's backlight can consume 80-90% of the device's power, but as much as 75% of the light generated is lost through the polarisers. A polarising OPV LCD could recover much of that unused energy, explains Yang.

Several global consumer electronics brands have been identified with efforts to integrate solar energy harvesting into devices. Apple, for example, has a patent that describes a way in which solar cells can charge lithium cell batteries in handheld and portable electronic devices, such as iPhones, iPads or MacBooks, stably and reliably.

This article appears in full in Volume 4, issue 2 of +Plastic Electronics magazine.
To read this article, along with more high-value, exclusive content, subscribe to +Plastic Electronics magazine.