Towards Industrialization of Organic Photovoltaic Cells and Modules for Indoor Applications

The need of scalable fabrication of high-efficiency organic photovoltaic cells and modules has gradually emerged. In particular, indoor organic photovoltaics (IOPV) constitutes an attractive energy harvesting solution to power IoT devices, given its deployability, reliability, and power density. A substantial portion of the billions of new IoT devices that will be installed in the coming years are expected to be located inside buildings. Such devices like environmental sensors, can have several shapes and sizes, hence the need to develop custom-made conformable photovoltaic devices to facilitate their integration into the final product. In this context, inkjet printing has become a very attracted printing technology for large-scale printed flexible cells and modules with freedom of shapes and designs.<br/><br/>Herein we demonstrate the challenge to go from lab-scale to industrial scale to achieve highly efficient fully inkjet printed IOPV cells and module. To prove the great advantage of inkjet printing as a digital technology allowing freedom of forms and designs, particular OPV modules with different shapes are demonstrated and integrated into different IoT devices to operate autonomously without using batteries or connections to the grid to ensure sufficient flexibility in their placement.