Paper is a fascinating material: it is abundant, harmless, cheap and useful. Humanity has relied on paper for storing information for centuries. The new challenge posed for paper consists of its future use as a substrate for organic electronic devices. This is one of the pivotal developments for paper uses, that will enable cheap and more environmentally friendly electronics. The added value of accessing portable, bendable and lightweight devices represents also a novelty and opportunity.
The paper “Printed Solar Cells and Energy Storage Devices on Paper Substrates“ by Francesca Brunetti, Alessandra Operamolla, Sergio Castro‐Hermosa, Giulia Lucarelli, Valerio Manca, Gianluca M. Farinola and Thomas M. Brown¹ was published in Advanced Functional Materials at the beginning of the year and represents a comprehensive review on the state-of-art research on printed photovoltaic devices or batteries and supercapacitors on paper and paper-like substrates. The paper is a contribution from researchers from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, who are involved for years in the topic of light-harvesting devices, photovoltaic conversion, and energy storage devices. Issues as device stability and active layers deposition strategies are critically assessed, reporting the most significative examples from the literature.
In particular, the authors try to trace a future perspective on the true possibilities of recycling devices deposited on paper, pointing at the current lack of strategy and technology due to a very fragmentary and not-focused research effort.
The review was commented in an article by Michael Berger that appeared in the magazine NanoWerk.
References. ¹ F. Brunetti, A. Operamolla, S. Castro-Hermosa, G. Lucarelli, V. Manca, G. M. Farinola, T. M. Brown, Advanced Functional Materials, 2019, 29 (21),1806798.
Copyrights of this article belong to Alessandra Operamolla. All rights reserved.
