Organic indoor light harvesters achieving recorded output power over 500% enhancement under thermal radiated illuminances

Zhihao Chen; Hang Yin; Zhenchuan Wen; Shu Kong So; Xiaotao Hao

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2021.04.010

Organic indoor light harvesters achieving recorded output power over 500% enhancement under thermal radiated illuminances

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2021 Aug 30;66(16):1641-1648. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2021.04.010. Epub 2021 Apr 13.

Authors

Zhihao Chen¹, Hang Yin², Zhenchuan Wen¹, Shu Kong So³, Xiaotao Hao⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China.
² School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China. Electronic address: hyin@sdu.edu.cn.
³ Department of Physics and Institute of Advanced Materials, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China.
⁴ School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China; ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, School of Chemistry, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia. Electronic address: haoxt@sdu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36654298
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2021.04.010

Abstract

Organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have found their potential applications in the harvest of indoor light photons. However, the output power of such indoor devices is usually far from the demand of the internet of things. Therefore, it is essential to boost the output power of indoor organic photovoltaics to a much higher level. As wildly deployed among industrial and civil luminous environments, thermal radiation-based indoor light sources are alternative candidates to supply the essential power of the off-grid electronics with a broad consecutive emission spectrum. In this work, we evaluated the photovoltaic performance of organic solar cells under indoor incandescent and halogen illuminations. Impressively, under such thermal radiations, an improvement over 500% of the output power density can be achieved in comparison with that under light-emitting diodes and fluorescent lamps, reaching a record high value of 279.1 μW cm^-2 by the PM6:Y6-based device. The remarkable power output is originated from the extra near-infrared spectrum of indoor thermal lights, which restricts the effective area under 10 cm² in achieving 1 mW output power. This work clarifies the feasibility of collecting photons radiated from indoor thermal light sources through OPV cells, and enlightens the further applications of indoor OPV cells under multiple illumination environments.

Keywords: Indoor photovoltaic; Organic photovoltaic; Power output; Thermal radiations.