Transparent Solar Cells Provide 50% more Battery Life in Portable Devices
Wysips® (What You See Is Photovoltaïc Surface), a subsidiary of Sunpartner Group, has invented a component capable of transforming any surface into a solar energy-producing medium without changing its look The Wysips Crystal component, placed beneath the screen, supplies enough energy to guarantee your phone stays permanently charged. The Wysips Crystal component is only 500 microns thick. Placed between the screen and the phone’s touch panel, it is totally integrated in the device without affecting its design aesthetics or touchscreen properties. It generates optimal power when exposed to artificial or natural light.
The Wysips Crystal component is 95% transparent (measured by industry standards) and is invisible to the naked eye. It has no impact on the phone’s intrinsic qualities: contrast, readability, angle of view or luminosity. Light energy is recovered and transformed into electric power that is directed back into the phone charging circuit, as if it were plugged into the grid or connected to a USB port.
The power generated by the component reaches 2.5 mW/ cm2 in the sunlight (1 sun), providing two to four extra minutes of communication time for 10 minutes of exposure on a 3G network. By the end of 2014, Wysips aims to reduce the exposure time for 1 minute of communication by four (5mW/cm²). And for products requiring only 60%-70% transparency, it can generate power of up to 10 mW/cm².
As part of the development under way, the Wysips component will be natively integrated in the phone battery or connected to the power management integrated circuit (PMIC), itself linked to both the battery and the phone core, which will allow the manufacturer to define the range of phone uses according to the amount energy supplied by the WYSIPS component. Devices with Wysips Crystal technology are expected to be on the market by the end of 2013.
