Self Powered Cholesteric Reflective Flexible Displays

A reflective display that simultaneously serves to generate power from ambient light is developed to create a flexible body worn display that does not require battery replacement or user charging. Taking advantage of optical features unique to the bistable cholesteric technology, the dual purpose reflective display makes efficient use of ambient light to convert into electrical power remaining light not reflected by the image even while the device is being operated as a display. Not possible with other known display technologies, a self powered, high resolution cholesteric display on a flexible substrate is developed for maps, text, photos and graphics at a page turn rate, on the average, of several pages per minute.