Solar Cell Touchscreens

Mar-02-13 The start-up Ubiquitous Energy has developed see-through solar cells that could eventually be installed on top of tablet and smartphone screens.

While most solar cells collect light in the visual spectrum, the solar cells from Ubiquitous Energy collect wavelengths at the ultraviolet and infrared portion of the spectrum. This allows the cells, which are made of different organic layers placed on at a time atop the screen, to be completely transparent. The company is still in the research and development phase, and current prototypes have a visible transparency of 70 percent and 2 percent efficiency.

Image: Appl. Phys. Lett. 98, 113305 (2011)
a) Picture of the “Teton mountains” displayed on an LCD screen (b) with the fully assembled transparent solar cell in front of the picture. In (a) the anode/active layer drawing is overlaid on the same picture and the orange boxes highlight the active layer area. a and (b) were taken side-by-side during the same exposure. (c) Picture of the series-integrated, transparent cell powering an LCD clock illuminated with 0.05 sun while allowing for high transparency.

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