High-performance neutral-color semitransparent organic photovoltaics with optical and thermal management

Abstract

Neutral-color semitransparent organic photovoltaics (ST-OPVs) offer potential opportunities to improve solar energy harvesting in integrated buildings. Here, high-performance multifunctional neutral-color ST-OPVs are successfully fabricated by integrating a Ag/TeO2/Ag/TeO2-based Fabry–Perot resonant optical coating (FPOC). Two coupled resonators of FPOCs are successfully fabricated to manipulate two adjacent transmission peaks in the visible region (380–780 nm) and high reflection from 1200 to 2500 nm, revealing its excellent color rendering index (CRI) tunability and thermal insulation. The 75 nm FPOC-integrated ST-OPV exhibits a CRI of 97.31, a high average visible transmittance of 43.15%, and a light utilization efficiency of 3.90% with superior thermal insulation properties, where the highest total and near-infrared solar-energy-rejected dual functional efficiencies are 2.92% and 3.47%, respectively. The record CRI value of 99.23 is achieved for the 65 nm FPOC-integrated ST-OPVs. Attributed to the angular tolerance of FPOC, the neutral-color ST-OPVs exhibit good angular insensitivity up to ±60°. The results demonstrate the flexibility and multifunctionality of visible dual-band-pass Ag/TeO2/Ag/TeO2-based FPOC for constructing neutral-color, heat-insulated, and angular-insensitive ST-OPVs, opening up a new avenue for the realization of smart power windows.