Cambridge researchers are working on a rechargeable mobile light

Today we are used to carry anywhere electronic devices that have some autonomy thanks to the batteries they carry and which, of course, we often carry electricity before leaving. The truth is that it is a nuisance running out of battery, for example, in our mobile and can not load it either because there is no outlet near or just do not have a charger, a limitation on the University of Cambridge have been proposed to eliminate the add to smartphones photovoltaic cells to > load them with sunlight or room light .

¿PV cells? The idea is quite curious since instead of placing these solar cells in the housing of the device (something that would significantly affect its design and aesthetics), these researchers are working on their integration into the screens OLED itself so that the ambient light of a room or sunlight incident on the screen is captured and used to feed the terminal or illuminate the screen.

Thanks to this "recycling lighting," the smartphone espaciaría much time need to be plugged into a mains charger as a large part of the energy come from solar cells.

According to the Cambridge team only 36% of the light produced by an OLED screen is projected outward and the remaining 64% is lost by the edges so the researchers have worked on a solution that also takes this lost light for recycling, by photovoltaic cells that are located behind the screen and the edges to capture losses. In addition, they designed a transistor made in a very thin film to serve as stabilizers of the current generated and prevent suffering terminal battery voltage fluctuations with something that added to a capacitor also carried out in a thin film battery would serve of energy.

The end result is a system that can save a lot of battery power while the smartphone is not yet possible to say goodbye to the charger while it is true that decreases the frequency of loading terminal. For the team this is a first step at all, means the end of the investigation since they want to improve the energy efficiency of the system and to this end, they want to add other MEMS-based systems that capture the movement of the terminal and also transformed these vibrations or movements into electrical energy that powers the smartphone.