In the future, LCDs could be used to harvest and recycle power to provide electricity for an electronic device. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) envision LCDs with integrated photovoltaic polarizers, which would allow displays to tap into ambient light, sunlight and their own backlight for additional electricity.

The researchers said they have created “a new type of energy-harvesting polarizer for LCDs called a polarizing organic photovoltaic, which can potentially boost the function of an LCD by working simultaneously as a polarizer, a photovoltaic device and an ambient light or sunlight photovoltaic panel.”

According to the scientists, 80 to 90% of a device’s entire power consumption could be caused by an LCD, while 75% of the light generated is lost without being used as a potential power source. Photovoltaic polarizers could solve this problem.

“In the near future, we would like to increase the efficiency of the polarizing organic photovoltaics, and eventually we hope to work with electronic manufacturers to integrate our technology into real products”, Yang Yang, a professor of materials science at UCLA Engineering and principal investigator on the research. “We hope this energy-saving LCD will become a mainstream technology in displays.”

Yang hopes that the invention would enable gadgets to be charged via sunlight directly through the display. “The polarizing organic photovoltaic cell demonstrated by Professor Yang’s research group can potentially harvest 75 percent of the wasted photons from LCD backlight and turn them back into electricity,” said Youssry Boutros, program director for the Intel Labs Academic Research Office, which supported the research.

SOURCE via Eurekalert