To this end, they have been extensively investigated in the past decade aiming to improve their photovoltaic performances, but there is still a big gap between the high-performance devices and real applications. Herein, the key advances of configurations, fabrications and performances of fiber solar cells are highlighted and analyzed.
Photovoltaic fibers have promising applications, especially in the context of wearable electronics. Early photovoltaic fibers aim at reducing the weight of substrates, creating structure innovation for light harvesting, and challenging the preparation technology. The basic design of photovoltaic cells is to construct solar cells on fiber or wire like substrates.
Qiu LB, He SS, Yang JH, Jin F, Deng J, Sun H, Cheng XL, Guan GZ, Sun XM, Zhao HB, Peng HS. An all-solid-state fiber-type solar cell achieving 9.49% efficiency. J. Mater. Chem. A 2016; 4:10105. Xiang SW, Zhang NN, Fan X. From fiber to fabric: progress towards photovoltaic energy textile. Adv Fiber Mater 2021; 3:76.
The first fiber-shaped perovskite solar cells (F-PSCs) were reported by Peng et al. in 2014. These cells not only retain the flexibility and wearable quality of fibers but also have photovoltaic applications in power electronic equipment .
The higher photovoltaic performances fiber solar cells have, the more electronic devices with more functions can be powered. Currently, their PCEs are limited by unsatisfactory fabrication technologies and materials.
During which, fiber-type devices were firstly assembled from fiber electrodes. The as-fabricated fiber device, as a whole, can be fed into the weaving machine as the weft or warp, and be woven together with cotton or other polymer wires to obtain the fabric-type solar cells.