OPV Powers Next Generation of Ambient IoT & Low-Power Electronics
November 13, 2025
Blog
As connected devices proliferate, from smart sensors, trackers and wearables to IoT networks, engineers face a mounting challenge: how to power millions of small systems efficiently and with sustainably.
Batteries, though ubiquitous, bring limitations: finite lifespans, maintenance costs due to battery-swaps, environmental impact, and design constraints. That’s where organic photovoltaic (OPV), a new form of energy harvesting, has become a game-changing technology for powering up electronics.
What Makes OPV Different
Unlike conventional silicon or perovskite solar cells, OPV technology uses carbon-based, printable materials to convert light into electricity. OPV cells are ultra-light, flexible, and semi-transparent, which means they can be integrated directly into curved or irregular surfaces like labels and wearables, something rigid solar cells could never do. Secondly, OPV cells are outperforming silicon-based solar cells in indoor environments when it comes to output power.
Dracula Technologies’ LAYER® (Light As Your Energetic Response) OPV product is at the forefront of this evolution. Our LAYER modules are printed on thin, flexible PET substrates using digital inkjet printing techniques. These LAYER modules work very efficiently under ambient indoor light, making them ideal for the environments where most IoT devices operate. Even at a light luminosity of 5 LUX, which is equivalent to candlelight, Dracula’s LAYER can harvest power.
Why OPV Hasn’t Been Done Before?
For years, OPV was an academic curiosity, promising, but unstable and inefficient. The chemistry behind organic semiconductors was complex, and production lacked scalability. However, advances in organic ink formulations, printing precision, and encapsulation have unlocked commercial viability.
Today, companies like Dracula Technologies have achieved energy densities sufficient to power up low-power electronics, such as sensors, e-paper displays, or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) modules. This is the result of almost 10 years R&D.
What Engineers Need to Know
For electrical design engineers, adopting OPV requires a shift in mindset how to design hardware. These OPV modules act as ambient energy sources, so integration focuses on optimizing power management rather than maximizing sunlight exposure.
Key considerations include:
- Energy profile: Matching OPV output (typically in microwatts to milliwatts) with the device’s duty cycle.
- Storage and management: Using small supercapacitors or thin-film batteries to buffer harvested energy.
- Form factor design: Leveraging OPV’s flexibility to embed power sources where batteries wouldn’t fit, such as device housings or product labels.
- Manufacturing integration: Because OPV can be digitally printed, it can be integrated seamlessly with additive electronics manufacturing processes.
A Sustainable Path Forward
Beyond technical advantages, OPV offers a sustainability story that aligns with company’s environmental goals. The materials are solvent-processable and recyclable, manufacturing occurs at low temperatures, and the absence of rare or toxic metals reduces lifecycle impact.
As the demand for maintenance-free, eco-friendly electronics grows, OPV is poised to become the power backbone of the IoT era, quietly transforming how engineers think about energy.
Concluding one could say that OPV is not just about harvesting light; it’s liberating electronics design.
Roelof Koopmans has 25 years of experience in founding and managing startups in IT and IoT. In the early 2000s, he was founder and CEO of hosted Internet datacenter services provider Aspectra AG in Zürich. He spent nine years as General Manager Europe for the US-based RFID/IoT company MOJIX Inc. From 2018 through 2023, Roelof worked with SEMTECH, where he was responsible for LoRa IoT. Since early 2023, he has been VP of Business Development at Dracula Technologies.
