Photo-powered integrated supercapacitors: a review on recent developments, challenges and future perspectives

Abstract

Photo-powered energy storage devices are attracting significant research interest due to their potential application in smart electronics. They have become a promising alternative to current energy sources and are suitable as next-generation power sources. Both planar and flexible/fiber photosupercapacitors are in the limelight due to their ease of fabrication, economic compatibility and multi-axial flexibility. A large number of integrated devices have emerged in the last decade, and among them, solar cell devices combined with supercapacitors have unique photo conversion and storage properties with promising overall efficiency. Thus, researchers have tried a wide variety of device combinations, and all reports are well sorted in this review. Herein, we comprehensively discuss different types of photo-powered supercapacitors with their design configuration, working mechanism and fabrication. Finally, the future direction, opportunities and challenges in this research field are discussed.