Silicon Nanoribbon Arrays Based Printed Multifunctional Flexible Photovoltaic Microcells

Abstract The photovoltaic devices offer promising eco‐friendly solution for self‐powered flexible electronics. However, their fabrication on flexible substrate is not easy due to mismatches between the requirements of conventional microfabrication and the thermal, and mechanical features of the substrates. Herein, direct roll printed nanoscale photoactive electronic layers are presented, which are further processed to develop ≈315 µm ² sized miniaturized photovoltaic microcells. Using a set of 32 microcells, connected in parallel configuration, indoor light harvesting is shown at a maximum power density of ≈10 µW cm ⁻² under white LED illumination. Further, the dual functionality of developed microcells i.e., energy harvesting as well as wideband photodetection is demonstrated. As self‐powered photo sensors the developed photovoltaic microcells exhibit distinctive photo responses under white LED‐UV (365 nm)‐ NIR (850 nm) light illumination, with exceptionally high‐speed response (rise time τ _Rise = 205 µs and fall time τ _Fall = 2000 µs), and a peak responsivity of 2.48 A W ⁻¹ to UV light at zero bias voltage. The presented results show the potential usage of printed multifunctional photovoltaic microcells in a wide variety of applications such as self‐powered wearable and flexible electronic systems for health monitoring and indoor robotics.