Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) that perform more efficiently under artificial indoor lighting conditions than they do under sunlight are attracting growing interest as they can potentially serve as ambient energy harvesters for powering low-power electronics and portable devices for the Internet of Things. Herein, solution-processed small-molecule OPVs are demonstrated to exhibit high power conversion efficiencies exceeding 16% under white LED illumination, delivering high output power densities of up to 12.4 and 65.3 μW cm–2 at 200 and 1000 lx, respectively. Increasing the open-circuit voltage (V oc) of OPVs is a critical factor for achieving higher indoor photovoltaic performance. Toward real applications, this small-molecule OPV system is adopted to fabricate six series-connected modules with an active area of ∼10 cm2 that are capable of generating a high output power surpassing 100 μW and a high V oc of over 4.2 V even under dimly lit indoor conditions of 200 lx. These results indicate that OPVs are promising as indoor electric power sources for self-sustainable electronic devices.

The ability of solution-processed organic photovoltaics (OPVs) based on new small-molecule semiconductors, 1DTP-ID and 2DTP-ID, for indoor dim-light energy harvesting is reported.