Self-powered reflective-type liquid crystal displays.

摘要

The highly functional portable information terminal, by which people can get and transfer any information at any place and time, is restricted by the capacity of the battery powering the display. Recently, new reflective displays based on Cholesteric LC and holographic LC technology use interference filters to provide full color images. It is proposed that the operating time of these displays can be increased considerably by simultaneously charging the battery using amorphous silicon germanium solar cells (a-SiGe:H) integrated with the display. The major contribution of this research is to analyze the feasibility of this new concept. We started from a detailed theoretical analysis of the different display technologies suited for this new technique. Through extensive simulations and an experiment, it is found that the current and voltage generated by the solar cells is sufficient to charge the battery and improve the time between recharges under different illumination conditions.