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  • Review Article
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Promises and challenges of indoor photovoltaics

Nature Reviews Clean Technology volume 1, pages 132–147 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Indoor photovoltaics (IPVs) harvest ambient light to produce electricity and can cleanly power the rapidly growing number of Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors. The surge in IPV development, with new proposed materials, devices and products, creates the need to critically evaluate how IPV devices have advanced and to assess their prospects. In this Review, we analyse the status, challenges and opportunities of established and emerging IPV technologies, including metal-halide perovskite, organic photovoltaics, dye-sensitized solar cell and perovskite-inspired materials. Many emerging low-toxicity semiconductor materials could reach IPV efficiencies of up to 50%, but carrier localization and defect trapping hinder their performance. Wide adoption of standardized performance assessment methods is essential, and further harmonization is needed for stress tests, qualification standards and energy rating assessments. For seamless IPV integration in IoT devices, series-connected cell modules and appropriate power management hardware are crucial to maximize energy extraction. IPV device stability, technology upscaling and cost-effective integration in IoT sensors must be further developed but balanced with sustainability across the entire value chain.

Key points

  • By harvesting energy widely and freely available from ambient lighting, emerging indoor photovoltaics (IPVs) could become a sustainable and practical energy supply for low-power Internet-of-Things (IoT) nodes.

  • Standardizing indoor light sources and measurement methods for testing IPV devices is essential for comparability across different research groups. At the same time, given the wide variation in indoor light sources, IPVs should be tested under diverse conditions to avoid discarding potential technologies and to accurately gauge their power output for IoT applications.

  • Emerging IPV technologies can be manufactured with low capital intensity due to their rapid and simple processes, and they can be quickly customized. However, it is crucial for manufacturers, engineers and financial planners to consider the technical and financial aspects of shipping and integrating them into third-party electronic products.

  • Establishing collaborations between photovoltaics experts and IoT engineers will be key to ensure that IPVs are tailor-made to address the needs of IoT.

  • Life cycle assessment on IPVs, particularly emerging materials, will be essential to account for the environmental impact at various stages and to develop eco-design strategies to improve the overall sustainability of IPV devices.

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Fig. 1: Working conditions for indoor photovoltaics.
Fig. 2: Established and emerging indoor photovoltaic technologies.
Fig. 3: Maximum efficiency of selected materials.
Fig. 4: Differences between testing for outdoor and indoor photovoltaics.
Fig. 5: Efficiencies of large-area new-generation indoor photovoltaics.

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Acknowledgements

G.K.G. thanks Tampere Institute for Advanced Study, Tampere University, for postdoctoral research funding. G.K. and J.C.B. acknowledge funding from the UK Department for Science, Innovation & Technology through the National Measurement System. F.B. and F.D.R. acknowledge the financial support of Lazio Region through ISIS@MACH (Research infrastructure approved by Giunta Regionale no. G10795, 7 August 2019 published on BURL no. 69, 27 August 2019), the project IGEA-A0613-2023-078007 and the SPOT-IT project funded by the Clean and Energy Transition Partnership under the 2022 CETPartnership joint call for research proposal, co-funded by the European Commission (Grant Agreement no. 101069750) and with the funding of the organizations detailed on https://cetpartnership.eu/funding-agencies-and-call-modules. R.L.Z.H. thanks UK Research and Innovation for financial support through a Frontier Grant (no. EP/X022900/1), awarded via the 2021 ERC Starting Grant scheme. P.V. thanks the Research Council of Finland, decision no. 347772, and Business Finland (SPOT-IT project). The work is part of the Research Council of Finland Flagship Programme, Photonics Research and Innovation (PREIN), decision no. 346511. T.M.B. acknowledges the Italian Ministry of Research for the PRIN2022 PNRR INPOWER (project no. P2022PXS5S) grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hybrid Solar Cells, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

    G. Krishnamurthy Grandhi & Paola Vivo

  2. National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK

    George Koutsourakis & James C. Blakesley

  3. CHOSE (Centre for Hybrid and Organic Solar Energy), Department of Electronic Engineering, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Francesca De Rossi, Francesca Brunetti & Thomas M. Brown

  4. Solaveni GmbH, Bönen, Germany

    Senol Öz

  5. Department of Biotechnology, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Adalgisa Sinicropi & Maria Laura Parisi

  6. SPECIFIC-IKC, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Matthew J. Carnie

  7. Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Robert L. Z. Hoye

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  1. G. Krishnamurthy Grandhi
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Contributions

G.K.G. and P.V. contributed to the ‘Devices and materials’ section, as well as to the Abstract, Introduction and ‘Summary and future perspectives’ sections. R.L.Z.H. contributed to the ‘Devices and materials’ and ‘Sustainability and commercialization’ sections, as well as to the ‘Summary and future perspectives’ section. G.K. and J.C.B. contributed to the ‘Measurements, characterization and standards’ and ‘Summary and future perspectives’ sections. F.D.R., F.B. and M.J.C. contributed to the ‘Scalability and integration’ section. S.Ö. and T.M.B. contributed to the ‘Sustainability and commercialization’ section. A.S. and M.L.P. contributed to the ‘Sustainability and commercialization’ and ‘Summary and future perspectives’ sections. All authors edited the Review together.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paola Vivo.

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Competing interests

S.Ö. is the CEO of Solaveni GmbH, a subsidiary of Saule Technologies, a perovskite solar cell company that markets devices for applications including indoor photovoltaics. R.L.Z.H. has a project funded by First Solar, a photovoltaic company, and a short-term project funded by Nissan that is related to photovoltaics, and is CTO of NanoPrint Innovations Ltd, a company that makes reactors for the photovoltaic industry.

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Supplementary information

Glossary

III–V semiconductors

For example, GaAs. A class of semiconductor materials that comprise elements of groups III and V of the periodic table.

Copper indium gallium sulfide

(CIGS). A widely used thin-film photovoltaic absorber.

Exciton binding energy

The energy required to dissociate a bound electron–hole pair (that is, an exciton) into free carriers.

Fill factor

(FF). The ratio of the actual maximum power output of a photovoltaic device to its theoretical maximum, reflecting the squareness of the device’s current–voltage curve.

Lux

Unit of measure for illuminance, indicating how much light falls on a surface per square metre.

Open-circuit voltage

(VOC). The open-circuit voltage of a photovoltaic (PV) device is the voltage across its terminals under illumination with no load connected (no current flows).

Photoluminescence

The re-emission of absorbed photons by a semiconductor at a longer wavelength.

p–i–n device configuration

An intrinsic semiconductor (i layer) is sandwiched between a hole-transport layer (p layer) and an electron-transport layer (n layer).

Short-circuit current density

(JSC). Refers to the amount of electrical current that flows through a photovoltaic device under short-circuit conditions under illumination, measured in amperes per unit area.

Shunt resistance

Shunt resistance in a photovoltaic cell’s equivalent circuit represents current leakage paths and can severely affect open-circuit voltage and fill factor under low-light conditions.

Urbach energy

This quantifies the width of the exponential tail in a semiconductor material’s optical absorption or band edge, revealing its degree of energy disorder.

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Grandhi, G.K., Koutsourakis, G., Blakesley, J.C. et al. Promises and challenges of indoor photovoltaics. Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 1, 132–147 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44359-024-00013-1

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