Toward Real Setting Applications of Organic and Perovskite Solar Cells: A Comparative Review

The development of efficient, reliable, and clean energy sources is one of the global priorities for enabling a sustainable transition toward a green society and economy. The third-generation solar cells, such as organic solar cells (OSCs) and perovskite solar cells (PSCs), are among the most promising platforms for the generation of electrical power from sunlight for a wide range of applications. However, the widespread diffusion of emerging photovoltaics technologies is hampered by issues occurring in the translation of laboratory-scale R&D efforts to real settings. Herein, starting from a thorough survey of latest research on OSC and PSC technologies, critical factors related to fabrication and operation of solar cells, especially in terms of materials properties/requirements and beyond metrics built on efficiency only, are analyzed. On this basis, OSCs and PSCs are compared in terms of their potential in real application scenarios, also highlighting their peculiarities in view of their future large-scale utilization.