Long-lived carbon-based perovskite solar cell in air and water via light concentrating encapsulation for battery-free indoor electronics

Abstract

Harvesting ambient indoor light presents a promising avenue for battery-free electronics, yet its practical implementation faces challenges due to limited operational output power and environmental robustness. Here we demonstrate a durable and low-cost perovskite-based indoor power system that enables long-term and battery-free operation under realistic indoor/humid and indoor/water environments (modified-ISOS-LC-1) by integrating carbon-based perovskite solar cells with a multilayer encapsulation architecture and concentrating techniques. A compact concentrator integrated model exhibits 1.73 V of V<inf>OC</inf> and 0.222 mA cm⁻² of J<inf>SC</inf> (1-cm² active area) under low-light illumination, substantially exceeding typical requirements for triple-A-battery-needed electronic devices (∼1.5 V). The device stability exhibits exceptional resistance to moisture and water exposure, including sustained operation under full water immersion. Accelerated aging system (modified-ISOS-LC-2) and reliability modelling indicate operational lifetimes beyond 10000 h under indoor conditions. We further demonstrate the practical relevance of this approach by continuously powering low-power internet of things (IoTs) sensors without external energy storage under different indoor light conditions.