Indoor application of emerging photovoltaics—progress, challenges and perspectives

Hou, Xueyan; Wang, Yiwen; Lee, Harrison Ka Hin; Datt, Ram; Miano, Nicolas Uslar; Yan, Dong; Li, Meng; Zhu, Furong; Hou, Bo; Tsoi, Wing Chung; Li, Zhe

doi:10.1039/d0ta06950g

Cited by 81 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 113 publications

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“…Clearly, the possibility of replacing batteries with sustainable power sources such as integrated flexible photovoltaic (PV) cells opens new opportunities for the development of IoT technologies. [ 3–5 ]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indoor Perovskite Photovoltaics for the Internet of Things—Challenges and Opportunities toward Market Uptake

Polyzoidis

Rogdakis

Kymakis

2021

Advanced Energy Materials

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The high‐power conversion efficiency of flexible perovskite photovoltaics (PPV) at low light environment and their low‐cost manufacturing processes, render PPV superior to conventional rigid photovoltaics targeting indoor applications. However, various parameters related to materials, architecture, processing, and indoor characterization need to be optimized further toward improving indoor PPV (iPPV) efficiency, stability, and ecotoxicity. This work provides an overview of the recent progress, trends, and challenges in the field and suggests a holistic approach toward a viable design and integration of iPPVs into Internet of Things (IoT) platforms without any compromise on safety and cost effectiveness. The key impact of selecting proper materials and fabrication techniques, as well as optimizing the active area and architecture is described. Certain peculiarities of the indoor lighting conditions are discussed that can be addressed by proper simulation tools, including the understanding of the charge‐transfer mechanism, the diversification of the lamp types, as well as identifying the requirements for the production, standardization, and installation of iPPVs associated with IoT devices. A multidimensional engineering approach that considers aspects of architecture, light technology, load specifications, materials, processing, safety and cost, is proposed as a path toward accelerating iPPV market uptake for households, businesses, wearables and Industry 4.0 applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indoor Perovskite Photovoltaics for the Internet of Things—Challenges and Opportunities toward Market Uptake

Polyzoidis

Rogdakis

Kymakis

2021

Advanced Energy Materials

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“…This degradation mechanism is both applicable for fullerene and nonfullerene based BHJ and can be avoided to some extent by designing the acceptor materials with sufficient electron affinities. [71,[110][111][112] One effective way to avoid the oxygen-induced photochemical degradation of the photoactive layer is encapsulation of the OPV device within glass or plastic films. However, glass films are not suitable for flexible OPVs and most of the plastic films used for encapsulation cannot fully block oxygen diffusion.…”

Section: Device Stability Of Indoor Organic Photovoltaicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indoor Organic Photovoltaics for Self‐Sustaining IoT Devices: Progress, Challenges and Practicalization

2021

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Indoor photovoltaics (IPVs) have great potential to provide a self-sustaining power source for Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. The rapid growth in demand for low-power IoT devices for indoor application not only boosts the development of highperformance IPVs, but also promotes the electronics and semiconductor industry for the design and development of ultra-low-power IoT systems. In this Review, the recent progress in IPV technologies, design rules, market trends, and future prospects for highly efficient indoor photovoltaics are discussed. Special attention is given to the progress and development of organic photovoltaics (OPVs), which demonstrate great possibilities for IPVs, owing to their bandgap tunability, high absorbance coefficient, semitransparency, solution processabil-ity, and easy large-area manufacturing on flexible substrates. Highly efficient indoor organic photovoltaics (IOPVs) can be realized through designing efficient donor and acceptor absorber materials that have good spectral responses in the visible region and better energy-aligned interfacial layers, and through modulation of optical properties. Interfacial engineering, photovoltage losses, device stability, and large-area organic photovoltaic modules are surveyed to understand the mechanisms of efficient power conversion and challenges for IOPVs under indoor conditions as a self-sustaining power source for IoT devices. Finally, the prospects for further improve in IOPV device performance and practical aspects of integrating IOPVs in low-power IoT devices are discussed.

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“…Comparing efficiencies of different publications is hard to handle fairly due to the variety of light sources and used illumination intensities. This problem is widely known and discussed in literature [31,51,59,62,91] and studies of Cui et al depicted origins of measuring errors and developed measuring protocols. Nevertheless, the problem of comparing data generated with different light source spectra still remains.…”

Section: Comparing Efficiencies Of Different Publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing and Quantifying Indoor Performance of Organic Solar Cells

Lübke

Hartnagel

Angona

et al. 2021

Advanced Energy Materials

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An important application that benefits from the tuneability of band gaps in molecular semiconductors is the use of organic photovoltaics (OPV) for indoor light harvesting. The market of the internet of things (IoT) is emerging remarkably and demands to drive high amounts of off-grid low power consumption devices. [8][9][10][11][12][13] The possibility to produce solution-based, lowcost, and flexible solar foils makes OPV a good candidate to fulfill this demand. Furthermore, the absorption spectra of the active materials can be tuned chemically to match different light sources.Although efficiencies for indoor organic photovoltaics (iOPV) and other emerging indoor photovoltaics (iPV) technologies such as halide perovskites [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] or dye-sensitized solar cells [44][45][46][47][48][49][50] have improved substantially, it is hard to quantify progress and determine champion solar cells due to a lack of standardized comparison methods. [12,51,52] Different authors use different conditions to evaluate the performance of their devices. The set-ups differ in the illuminance value (ranging typically from 200 to 1000 lux) and the source of light, namely light emitting diodes (LED) or fluorescent lamps (FL) with varying emission spectra and color temperatures. This makes it difficult to compare devices and regularly leads to the publication of tables or figures where data is compared for different input spectra and illuminances. [43,53,54] The exact spectrum and intensity are, however, more than just a minor inconvenience for data comparison but can have a major impact on the output power at a given illuminance and the efficiency. This is due to several reasons. First, the presence of shunts [55][56][57] can have a substantial effect on the dependence of open-circuit voltage and fill factor on the light intensity under indoor conditions. [55,56,58] Second, the short-circuit current at a given illuminance strongly depends on the overlap of the materials' absorption spectra and the spectral emission power of the light source. [53,59] The exact spectrum is even more critical than for outdoor illumination, because indoor light sources have much more narrow spectra with strong emission between wavelengths of 400 and 700 nm [60,61] as compared to the air mass 1.5 global (AM1.5G) spectrum.In the worst-case scenario, an otherwise well-performing solar cell could exhibit low efficiencies if the color temperature of the light source is not suitable to the specific absorber bandgap. Standardizing indoor spectra as done for outdoor efficiency measurements is not practical given the substantial spectral differences between the used light sources. Furthermore, With increasing efficiencies of non-fullerene acceptor-based organic solar cells, thin-film technology is becoming a promising candidate for indoor light harvesting applications. However, the lack of standardized comparison methods makes it difficult to quantify progress and to compare indoor performance. Herein, a simple method to calculate the efficiency ...

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Indoor application of emerging photovoltaics—progress, challenges and perspectives

Abstract: The development of solution-processed photovoltaic (PV) devices for indoor applications has recently attracted widespread attention owing to their outstanding potential in harvesting energy efficiently for low-power-consumption electronic devices, such as...

Cited by 81 publications

References 113 publications

Indoor Perovskite Photovoltaics for the Internet of Things—Challenges and Opportunities toward Market Uptake

Indoor Perovskite Photovoltaics for the Internet of Things—Challenges and Opportunities toward Market Uptake

Indoor Organic Photovoltaics for Self‐Sustaining IoT Devices: Progress, Challenges and Practicalization

Comparing and Quantifying Indoor Performance of Organic Solar Cells

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