Solar Cells that can absorb energy from bulbs/Tubelights!

[salman91]

Hi,

I am sorry if this is in the wrong place.

I had an idea of using Polymer-fullerene solar cells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konarka_Technologies#Polymer-fullerene_solar_cells) in Mobile phones to recharge its battery using Indoor lights.
But , unfortunately, these cells are of NANO-technology. so i dont know how to implement it.

So, is there any other such cells that absorb energy from indoor lights?

Waiting for replies.

Regards.

[berkeman]

Hi,

I am sorry if this is in the wrong place.

I had an idea of using Polymer-fullerene solar cells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konarka_Technologies#Polymer-fullerene_solar_cells) in Mobile phones to recharge its battery using Indoor lights.
But , unfortunately, these cells are of NANO-technology. so i dont know how to implement it.

So, is there any other such cells that absorb energy from indoor lights?

Waiting for replies.

Regards.

Pretty much any type of photovoltaic cell will give you a little current out with indoor lighting. That's how "solar powered" calculators work:

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS301US302&q=calculator%20solar%20powered&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

There is usually enough power available from indoor lighting to power these LCD/CMOS calculators, but I doubt there is enough (with any reasonably-sized cells) to re-charge batteries...

[KingNothing]

There are a lot of efforts to "harvest" energy - electromagnetic energy (both visible light all the way through RF frequencies) and mechanical energy (from vibrations).

The aim is usually to harvest enough energy in one day while being off to make a 5-minute emergency phone call. This is a huge feat - which tells you a little bit about how much power is consumed by a device relative to how much one can harvest.

[DragonPetter]

I think if current technology could do this practically, it would have been done already. Its sad, but think of the most obscure applications or great ideas you can think of, and then search it in google and you will see someone else almost always already came up with the idea before you did. If it interests you, its worth investigating, but the fact that something obvious isn't already being done can give you an idea of how practical it is.