The second emerging Photovoltaics Workshop (ePVW2) at the 8th international conference Next Generation Solar Energy (NGSE8) was held in Erlangen, Germany, this December 2023 with the participation of several world-class experts in the field.

In the introductory talk, Osbel Almora introduced the just published Emerging-PV report 2023. This is the 4th version of the yearly reviews series in Advanced Energy Materials, which summarizes the latest progress in device performance an versatile applications of emerging photovoltaics.

Subsequent presentations were offered by several members of the emerging PV initiative, including Rene Janssen (TU Eindhoven), “Multijunction Perovskite Solar Cells: Materials, Devices, and Characterization”; Maria A. Loi (University of Groningen), “SnO2 for High-Performance and Stable Organic Solar Cells”; and Barry P. Rand (Princeton), “Unforeseen ink chemistry: Solutions for perovskite solar cells”. Furthermore, Vincent Le Corre (FAU / HI ERN) and Maria Ronda-Lloret (Wiley) presented “Machine learning and device modeling as an automated diagnostic tool for high-throughput research” and “AI Tools in Scientific Writing and Publishing”, respectively.

Sensationally, Kenjiro Fukuda (RIKEN) presented the talk “Very Thin and Lightweight Flexible Organic Solar Cells: Performance and Potential Applications”. In this presentation, an insightful overview on the characterization methods of flexible photovoltaics and the latest research progress of his group were provided. Nonetheless, the most impressive section was about a project on cyborg cockroaches. Kenjiro shared videos and images of the cockroaches carrying electronic equipment for rescue tasks in disaster areas. The battery charging for the electronics on top of the cockroaches was based on thin film photovoltaic devices deposited on top of 4 μm-thick substrates.

The 3rd emerging PV workshop is expected to be announced on September 2024.