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We here more and more about the OLED technology and how many of the smartphone manufacturers use it to develop their smartphone’s displays. On the other hand, today’s smartphones’ biggest problem is the battery life, thus, in an attempt to extend the battery life of the smartphones, a group of researchers thought they could integrate solar cells in the displays of the aforementioned devices. For the time being it’s only a project, but if this concept materializes, I am pretty sure that it would be warmly welcomed by most of the smartphone manufactures and smartphone enthusiasts.

This idea seems at least strange, just thinking that after you will arrive at office or at school we will all put our smartphones near the window to recharge the battery. Late 2011, Arman Ahnood, a researcher at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, proved at Materials Research Society that this idea is not so absurd as it looks and that can be used on real devices. Arman Ahnood said that only 36% of the light emitted by the OLED displays is useful, while the rest is just wasted. The photosensitive cells placed on the back and sides of the OLED display can gather the light and transform it into power. Moreover, the OLED and LCD are not completely opaque, thus the sunlight can reach the same solar cells, which basically means more power and better battery life.

Arman Ahnood made a display prototype that integrates both the aforementioned technologies, OLED and solar cells. He managed to gather the energy emitted by the OLED display, using solar cells that were applied over the display. The OLED-solar cell-based system had an energy recovery efficiency of 11%, with peaks of up to 18%. According to the researcher, only 36% of the light emitted by the OLDE panels can be captured by the photovoltaic cells.

The system created Arman Ahnood can produce a power of 5MW if applied on a 3.7-inch display. It’s not much, but is definitely improving the smartphone’s battery life. Probably, in time, with some tweaks here and there, this technology might even eliminate the need of recharging the smartphones and, why not, any appliance that uses a OLED display.

Reports show that the 11% efficiency the system has can generate an additional power of only 5 mW on a standard OLED 3.7-inch display. Is not an impressive figure, but we all know that every extra minute in battery life can count when you really need to use your smartphone. The next step for the researchers that developed this system is to create a design that will allow them to further extend its efficiency.

It’s not a secret that improving the smartphone battery life is what all the manufacturers want, but this approach is at least surprising. Now all we have to do is wait, then get our smartphones outside to recharge them.