Device characteristics and material developments of indoor photovoltaic devices

Publication date: Available online 3 October 2019Source: Materials Science and Engineering: R: ReportsAuthor(s): Addanki Venkateswararao, Johnny K.W. Ho, Shu Kong So, Shun-Wei Liu, Ken-Tsung WongAbstractIndoor photovoltaics (IPVs), which convert the indoor light energy into direct electricity, have attracted research attention due to their potential use as an excellent amicable solution of sustainable power source to drive low-power-needed sensors for the internet of things (IoT) applications. Our daily life adopts various indoor light sources, such as indirect sunlight, incandescent lamps, halogen lamps, fluorescent lamps, and LED bulbs, that typically deliver lower light intensity (200–1000 lux) as compared to that of sun light (∼100,000 lx). In this review, we firstly classified the indoor lights depending on their working mechanism and resulting emission spectrum. Because the indoor light intensities are rather low that may lead to overestimate/underestimate the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of IPV devices, then, the cautious points for correctly measuring the indoor light intensity as well as the device characteristics are summarized. Several light sources with various light intensities are reported so far, but for lack of common or standard calibration meter that induces a ambiguity in PCE determination, so we suggest/propose to use a universal LED lux meter with NIST-traceable calibration (e.g. Extech LT40-NIST) and also recommended the device results are e...
Source: Materials Science and Engineering: R: Reports - Category: Materials Science Source Type: research