Photovoltaic cells allow people to stay connected wherever they are.
Bags with their own solar panels will allow people to recharge mobile phones on the run, a conference on sustainable technology has heard.

Mobile phone covers, laptop cases and bags with photovoltaic cells will be available later this year, according to Len McKelvey, director of their Australian supplier, Air Water Australia.

The technology, which has been used by the Israeli military, was on show at last week's Enviro 04 conference.

BERKELEY, CA — Researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with crystal-growing teams at Cornell University and Japan's Ritsumeikan University, have learned that the band gap of the semiconductor indium nitride is not 2 electron volts (2 eV) as previously thought, but instead is a much lower 0.7 eV.
The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current.