Motorola filed a patent for LCD with embedded Solar Cell

One of the main concerns of mobile devices manufacturers is increasing the autonomy by using more advanced battery technologies. Fuel cells seem to be the next best thing, but some people think they got a better idea. Those people are from Motorola, and they recently filed a patent about an LCD screen fitted with transparent Solar Cells, which will allow recharging during use, if the LCD is exposed to sun light.

All this is possible because of thin film solar cells, which allows light to pass to the surface beneath it, in this case the solar panel, which absorbs light. The best pass through ratio, 75%, is achieved with black and white LCD screens. The key to this process are TCO materials (Transparent Conductive Oxides), used in both solar cells and LCD screens today, which allows light to pass through a substrate window to the active light absorbing material beneath, and also serves as an ohmic contact to transport photo generated charge carriers away from that light absorbing material (wikipedia source).

Small schematics of a LCD with embedded Solar Cell

Currently manufacturing such LCD screens is very expensive, and the end product has some flows, like poor mechanical strength, poor transmittance in infrared spectrum, but they will be overcomed in the next years, as the interest versus this technology is growing rapidly. The idea is not new, as Seiko, Minolta and Sharp showed interest in it in past years, but Motorola managed to get a patent filed, after over 30 years of research in solar energy field. More info can be found at Patent Money.

Source: CrunchGear