Photo-assisted rechargeable batteries: principles, performance, and development

Abstract

Various energy storage devices are highly demanded by our modern society. The use of solar energy, an important green energy source, is extremely attractive for future energy storage. Recently, intensive efforts are dedicated to photo-assisted rechargeable battery devices as they can directly convert and store solar energy efficiently and thus provide a potential way to utilize sunlight on a large scale. Considering the rapid development and emerging problems for photo-assisted rechargeable batteries, this review starts with the fundamentals of batteries and follows with the development of photo-assisted rechargeable batteries, where photoelectrode components, working principles, types and advanced strategies to improve the performance of photo-based rechargeable batteries are classified and explained systematically. After the detailed demonstration of the state-of-the-art photo-assisted rechargeable battery examples, the bottleneck of such photo-assisted rechargeable batteries is discussed and future challenges and prospects of photo-assisted rechargeable batteries are proposed. This review can provide possibilities for advancing the design principles for photo-assisted rechargeable batteries.