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Flexible organic solar cells for biomedical devices

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Abstract

Organic solar cells (OSCs), particularly made based on solution processing methods, have made significant progress over the past decades through the concurrent evolution of organic photovoltaic materials and device engineering. Recently, high power conversion efficiencies around 18% and over 16% have been demonstrated in both rigid and flexible OSCs, respectively. While most of the OSC research has centered on efficiency and cost, their emerging and potential usages in many critical applications, particularly in biomedical fields have been rising. In this mini-review, we will briefly discuss the high-performance organic photovoltaic materials and the representative flexible OSCs to give a scope on the recent rapid development of OSCs. Besides, we will review some progress on the applications of OSCs in biomedical devices and integrated systems. The potential challenges associated with integrating OSCs for biomedical devices will be put forward.

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Acknowledgements

C. Y. would like to acknowledge the funding support by the National Institute of Health (R21EB026175, 1R21EB030257-01) and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-18-1-2338) under the Young Investigator Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Bin Kan & Cunjiang Yu

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Faheem Ershad & Cunjiang Yu

  3. Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Zhoulyu Rao & Cunjiang Yu

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Cunjiang Yu

  5. Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Cunjiang Yu

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  1. Bin Kan
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  2. Faheem Ershad
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Correspondence to Cunjiang Yu.

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Kan, B., Ershad, F., Rao, Z. et al. Flexible organic solar cells for biomedical devices. Nano Res. 14, 2891–2903 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3386-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3386-z

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