Semitransparent Organic Solar Cells with Viewing-Angle-Independent Janus Structural Colors

Semitransparent organic solar cells (STOSCs) hold great promise for applications ranging from building-integrated photovoltaics to portable electronic devices, yet often challenging over the realization of color tunability. The structural colors generated by microcavity, subwavelength grating, or photonic crystals are highly dependent on the viewing angle, which limits the application of STOSCs in real scenarios. Herein, the spectrally selective substrates consisting of silica spheres-based amorphous photonic crystals (APCs) are proposed to unify the optical spectra of STOSCs at different viewing angles. By optimizing the periodicity of APCs, STOSCs exhibit viewing-angle-independent reflection with colors varying from blue to pink. The synergetic interplay between the reflection of APCs and the absorption of active layer results in the Janus optical effect that the transmitted light is fixed at blue regardless of the reflected color. The STOSCs on flexible plastic retain the stable color even at bending state. These results pave the way for the potential application of colorful solar photovoltaic glass curtains.