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In the field of photovoltaics (PV), an important trend is to increase the aesthetic and creative design aspects of solar cells towards more attractive and customized devices for integration in for instance architecture (e.g. Building Integrated Photovoltaics BIPV). Recent evolutions in this domain are mainly situated in the class of emerging PV such as organic solar cells (OPV), dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) and perovskite solar cells. These solar cell technologies provide additional degrees of design freedom, as they can be processed by printing and allow the realization of semi-transparent solar cells and the use of various colors. Here we aim to go a step further. In this contribution we report on our aim to develop semi-transparent solar cells with integrated images (photographs, paintings, geometric and graphical patterns, text,..) that generate electricity when illuminated, a concept we termed as “Photovoltaic Photographs”. The proposed concept consists of semi-transparent solar cells with an integrated image (functional as photoactive layer), allowing creative applications such as photovoltaic photographs, paintings, posters, etc. The approach proposed here to obtain a patterned 2D-photoactive layer, is by using direct photo-induced patterning process, i.e. one-step photolithography (with mask / without resist) and direct light writing (i.e. maskless / without resist). Encouraged by our recent realization of a proof-of-principle demonstrator using dye sensitized solar cells, in this project we pursue a thorough understanding and control of the proposed light-induced patterning processes and underlying physicochemical (“bleaching”) mechanisms, and their effects on nanoscale material properties, device characteristics, and stability. These insights will also help us in the exploration of combining this concept and these processes with other PV technologies.
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