Publications, patents, and datasets in organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are expanding at an unprecedented rate. Research leaders must ensure their teams can quickly identify and act on critical information to drive progress and maintain a competitive edge in a fast-moving industry. By implementing efficient knowledge management processes and systems, teams can streamline their research to reduce the time and resource costs associated with identifying key information in OPVs and other rapidly evolving fields.
A rising tide of data
Across industries, researchers are facing a growing volume of fragmented scientific sources. The number of publications has been increasing year over year, with a 22.78% increase in academic articles published between 2018 and 2022.1 This abundance of data offers opportunities for discovery but creates significant obstacles. For teams who aren’t adequately prepared, the volume of information can drain time and resources, lead to missed insights, and slow the pace of innovation.
The risk of data overload is high for rapidly evolving fields like OPVs. To outpace competitors, research teams must stay ahead of new developments across a range of disciplines, including materials, processes, and device architectures. With over 33.5 thousand publications in photovoltaics in 2024 alone, an increase of nearly 40% over the last five years, keeping up with the sheer volume of data poses a formidable challenge even for seasoned scientists.
However, OPVs represent a significant opportunity for electronics research teams that can navigate the overwhelming data landscape. Driven by growing consumer demand for sustainable products and emerging markets, including agriculture, transportation, and architecture, researchers can take advantage of investments from major companies and governmental incentives to fuel their innovation. By developing novel materials and processes that improve the efficiency, durability, and stability of OPVs, companies can advance the market with breakthroughs that outcompete traditional silicon-based solar cells.2
Minimize noise for data-driven decision making
Finding opportunities for innovation in global OPV information is a challenging. With exponential publication growth, teams must perform effective searches that pinpoint critical insights and enable them to make confident research decisions. With some tools shown to return irreproducible results even when identical search strings are used, equipping research teams with the infrastructure needed for targeted, exhaustive searches can be complex.3
However, when a tool can return reliable search results, a new challenge arises: finding the insights within. Most traditional search tools are reliant on basic keyword matching, which fails to capture the nuanced relationships between concepts. This leads to researchers spending precious time and resources scouring lengthy and overly broad result sets to find key information.
This challenge is only exacerbated when looking for highly technical information in OPVs, such as the trade-off between average visible light transmittance (AVT) and power conversion efficiency (PCE).2 A traditional search is likely to return results relating to either of these performance parameters rather than those relating to their relationship. Utilizing a search tool with curated industry-specific filters and natural language searching enables research teams to navigate directly to relevant insights, freeing up time and resources for innovation.
Address fragmented data sources
Search efficiency cannot be achieved without comprehensive, up-to-date sources. As an interdisciplinary field, OPV research teams regularly need to search varied sources, from raw material properties to device production processes. Data and insights from these disciplines are fragmented across different publications, databases, and languages, making it difficult and labor-intensive for research teams to collate the information on which their breakthroughs are built.
With the rapid rate of development within the field of OPVs, research teams need to keep track of the latest publications and patents not only in OPVs but also in other competing solar cell technologies, such as nanocrystal and perovskite photovoltaics.2 Ensuring teams have access to regularly updated, comprehensive global databases is essential to keeping R&D operations at the cutting edge of the industry and minimizing the risk of missed opportunities.
In addition to scientific information, teams must stay informed about the full range of regulatory complexities that affect their work. Due to their high tunability, OPVs can be designed to suit a range of diverse applications. From integration with construction materials to portable wearable devices,2 each industry application brings unique compliance requirements. By leveraging centralized platforms that combine scientific and regulatory information, teams can streamline the path to market and avoid costly rework.
Enhance collaboration and communication
In the interdisciplinary teams of OPVs research, departments including materials science, engineering, and chemistry can all be working towards a common goal. However, information sharing often relies on time-intensive meetings or reports. In these cases, delays and errors create data silos between departments that lead to redundant work and increased resource costs.
The vast quantities of information handled by teams working in rapidly evolving fields like OPVs, combined with the pressing need to increase efficiency in the race to market, demand more effective solutions. By utilizing a centralized platform to collaborate on ideas and communicate insights, entire teams can keep up-to-date in real time with instant cross-departmental communication.
Integrating a centralized platform into a research workflow is often challenging. However, by choosing a platform with an intuitive interface and seamless web-based sharing, teams can drive universal adoption and bridge gaps in knowledge management expertise and processes across departments while ensuring scalability for future needs.
Overcoming data overload with the CAS SciFinder Discovery PlatformTM
The CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform, built on the CAS Content CollectionTM, brings you access to the world's most comprehensive human-curated collection of scientific data. Covering substances, literature, patents, reactions, and more, our industry-expert scientists read, analyze, and connect diverse global information into a single, user-friendly interface.
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Intuitively search for complex, industry-specific concepts like ‘OPV donor-receptor pairs’ using natural language and leverage advanced filtering techniques to focus your search, such as on recent journals and patents relating to organic solar cells.
Navigating a data-rich future
As scientific data continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, researchers across disciplines face the same challenge: how to harness this wealth of information without being overwhelmed by it. OPVs are a microcosm of this broader issue, illustrating the critical need for tools that simplify data access, enhance collaboration, and enable smarter decision-making.
To ensure a future-proof knowledge management strategy for rapidly evolving fields, research teams can:
- Select search tools that are updated over time to evolve with the industry.
- Rely on databases that provide trusted, comprehensive, and up-to-date information.
- Implement user-friendly processes and tools with short adoption times.
- Consider long-term needs for scalability.
Centralized platforms like the CAS SciFinder Discovery Platform are not just tools for managing information overload; they are catalysts for innovation. By providing researchers with the insights they need, when they need them, these platforms empower scientists to focus on what they do best: advance the frontiers of knowledge.
Ready to transform the way you navigate scientific information?