Recent Progress on Indoor Organic Photovoltaics: From Molecular Design to Production Scale

Recently, indoor photovoltaics have attracted much interest for their ability to power small electronic devices and sensors, especially with the growth of the internet of things (IoT). Because of their absorption covering ambient emission spectra and tunable electronic structures, π-conjugated polymers and small molecules are well-suited for these applications. Among many benefits, including their ink processability, low weight, and flexibility, indoor organic photovoltaics (IOPVs) show power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) over 26%. This represents a power output of over 30 μW cm –2 under office light (500 lx), which is sufficient to operate many electronic devices and sensors with a relatively small photovoltaic area. This Focus Review highlights the major advances in the material design for IOPVs and includes some industrial insights to reach the production scale criteria.