Recent Advances in Mechanically Robust and Stretchable Bulk Heterojunction Polymer Solar Cells

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Organic bulk heterojunction solar cells are promising candidates as future photovoltaic technologies for large-scale and low-cost energy production. It is, therefore, not surprising that research on the design and preparation of these types of organic photovoltaics has attracted a lot of attention since the last two decades, leading to constantly growing values of energy conversion and efficiency. Combined with the possibility of a large-scale production via roll-to-roll printing techniques, bulk heterojunction solar cells enable the fabrication of conformable, light-weight and flexible light-harvesting devices for point-of-use applications. This perspective review will highlight the recent advances toward mechanically robust and intrinsically stretchable bulk heterojunction solar cells. Mechanically robust fullerene-based and all-polymer devices will be presented, as well as a comprehensive overview of the recent challenges and characterization techniques recently developed to overcome some of the challenges of this research area, which is still in its infancy.