Photovoltaic Polzrizers Could Charge Gadgets via LCDs

[Guest]

LCDs have been traditionally known as the devices that suck the most power out of a battery.

Photovoltaic Polzrizers Could Charge Gadgets via LCDs : Read more

 

[Andrei24]

Sounds good. I am all for this technology!

 

[Soda-88]

u mean polarizers?

 

[DSpider]

Maybe extend the battery of a laptop or something. Probably not by much (10%?) but still an improvement. Let's hope it doesn't dry out the batter, tho...

 

[annymmo]

This is awesome.
Seriously, this could really extend battery life dramatically.

 

[Hellbound]

Quick, someone patent this before Apple gets it......

 

[therandomuser]

This oddly sounds like troll science.

 

[MrBig55]

Yeah charging via direct sunlight is not a flawless idea, I mean direct sunlight is not really suitable for clear viewing the screen clearly with great colors. So if they could charge in direct sunlight AND use that extra power to elevate brightmess contrast would make it a better idea.

 

[K-zon]

Sounds like trying to charge from discharge of interest of use. Which is fine but still of it though is you would need to recharge to use.

Otherwise would seem like a decent idea to say at times, given you'd have more power to use from before then not.

 

[AEternal1]

seems that Tom's SERIOUSLY needs to step up their game on the anti-spamming measures......
it's just sad that a TECH site is so over-spammed.

 

[zak_mckraken]

Too bad the only place where he misspelled polarizer is in the title.

 

[tburns1]

Soooo ...in saying that 75% of light is wasted as a potential powere source, does that mean 25% is already being used as a power source, or 25% of the light would in no way be able to be used? Probably the latter. I would also argue that 75% is not being wasted -- it goes to, ummm, your eyes. How would your screen look 75% darker? Because if they recoupe the light, that's 75% less you'l actually see.

 

[turk690]

@ tburns1, LCD panels are like venetian blinds: they close and open in rapid succession, allowing the light from the backlight to pass through and in the process creates the images we see. Most backlights have only one level of brightness (ie, full blazing power-consuming ON), even if the LCD pixels were to all be fully closed (black), so IMHO it's not hard to comprehend all those lumens the backlight is continuously furiously pumping out just being wasted, 75% of it so the article says. No, it didn't go to your eyes; it got stopped, right there at the LCD pixel in its black or closed state.
This is what inspired the UCLA people to at least get something back from all that wasted light, in the form of their photovoltaic polarizers. Many current LCDs are LED-backlit. LEDs are more amenable to some form of dynamic brightness control than their fluorescent lamp counterparts ever were, but some of their light output will still be wasted, though.
This is one area where CRTs and LCDs differ: variability in power consumption on varying degrees of picture brightness. The brighter a picture on a CRT is, the more power that TV consumes; a conventional fluorescent-lamp backlit LCD TV's power consumption scarcely varies whether the image onscreen was bright or dark, because the flourescent lamps, which consume the lion's share of the total power a typical LCD TV requires, is always full-blast ON.

 

[turk690]

@ tburns1, LCD panels are like venetian blinds: they close and open in rapid succession, allowing the light from the backlight to pass through and in the process creates the images we see. Most backlights have only one level of brightness (ie, full blazing power-consuming ON), even if the LCD pixels were to all be fully closed (black), so IMHO it's not hard to comprehend all those lumens the backlight is continuously furiously pumping out just being wasted, 75% of it so the article says. No, it didn't go to your eyes; it got stopped, right there at the LCD pixel in its black or closed state.
This is what inspired the UCLA people to at least get something back from all that wasted light, in the form of their photovoltaic polarizers. Many current LCDs are LED-backlit. LEDs are more amenable to some form of dynamic brightness control than their fluorescent lamp counterparts ever were, but some of their light output will still be wasted, though.
This is one area where CRTs and LCDs differ: variability in power consumption on varying degrees of picture brightness. The brighter a picture on a CRT is, the more power that TV consumes; a conventional fluorescent-lamp backlit LCD TV's power consumption scarcely varies whether the image onscreen was bright or dark, because the flourescent lamps, which consume the lion's share of the total power a typical LCD TV requires, is always full-blast ON.