Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

摘要

Solar photovoltaics (PV) offer viable and sustainable solutions to satisfythe growing energy demand and to meet the pressing climate targets. Thedeployment of conventional PV technologies is one of the major contributorsof the ongoing energy transition in electricity power sector. However,the diversity of PV paradigms can open different opportunities for supplyingmodern systems in a wide range of terrestrial, marine, and aerospace applications.Such ubiquitous and versatile applications necessitate the developmentof PV technologies with customized design capabilities. This involvesmultifunctional characteristics such as aesthetic appearance, visual comfort,and heat insulation. To enable on-demand adaptation to the requirements ofdistributed applications, tunable solar cells (SC) feature exceptional degreesof freedom in the manipulation of their intrinsic properties via adjustedmaterials engineering. The pertinent tuning abilities include but are notlimited to bandgap energy, transparency, color, and thermal management. Inthis review, the main principles of different tuning approaches are specifiedand an overview of relevant concepts of tunable SC technologies is presented.Then, the recent integrations of cutting-edge tunable PV adapted to versatileapplications are systematically summarized. In addition, current challengesand insightful perspectives into potential future opportunities for omnipresenttunable PV are discussed.