All-polymer indoor photovoltaic modules

Yingze Zhang; Ning Wang; Yinghui Wang; Jidong Zhang; Jun Liu; Lixiang Wang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103104

All-polymer indoor photovoltaic modules

iScience. 2021 Sep 9;24(10):103104. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103104. eCollection 2021 Oct 22.

Authors

Yingze Zhang^{1

2}, Ning Wang^{1

2}, Yinghui Wang^{1

2}, Jidong Zhang¹, Jun Liu^{1

2}, Lixiang Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, P. R. China.
² University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China.

Abstract

Indoor photovoltaic (IPV) with power output over 100 μW is promising to power the numerous sensor nodes in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. All polymer photovoltaic has the advantages of excellent thermal stability and superior mechanical properties. In this work, we fabricate the first all-polymer indoor photovoltaic module with the active area of 10 cm². The module uses polymer donor CD1 and new polymer acceptor PBN-21 with medium optical band gap of 1.9 eV as the active layer. It is processed with eco-friendly solvent tetrahydrofuran and the morphology can be improved by blade coating at 55°C. Under light emitting diode illumination at 1000 lux, the module exhibits a power conversion efficiency of 12.04% and a power output of 367.2 μW. The sufficient power output, high efficiency, excellent stability, and eco-friendly processing indicate that all-polymer indoor photovoltaic is a promising approach to achieve the self-powered of sensor nodes in the IoT ecosystem.

Keywords: energy materials; energy systems; polymers.