Comprehensive Evaluation of Industrial Potentials for Indoor Organic Photovoltaic Materials via a New Figure of Merit

Abstract Although the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of indoor organic photovoltaic (IOPV) continue increasing toward the 30% milestone, important factors (e.g., operation stability and cost potential) for industrial application are neglected, thus resulting in a lack of overall top‐down thinking to evaluate the commercialization potential of IOPVs. By introducing five active layer systems to analyze their efficiency–stability–cost gaps, a standardized indoor industrial figure of merit (i‐FOM_indoor) concept is proposed as a reliable approach to evaluate their industrial viability. This i‐FOM_indoor contains extracted energy density (including PCE, T₈₀ lifetime, and input power density) and material cost (including synthesis complexity and material usage). To inspire a broader interest, the correlations between active layer thickness, efficiency–stability–cost gap, and i‐FOM_indoor are also investigated. Impressively, the levelized cost of energy of IOPVs is less sensitive to the active layer thickness in comparison to the outdoor OPVs. Inspired by this i‐FOM_indoor, an outdoor i‐FOM is also proposed for industrial potential evaluation of OPV materials in real external environments.