Customizable Colorfoil for Photovoltaic Modules: a New Approach to Aesthetic and Efficient Solar Energy Integration

Integrating photovoltaic (PV) modules into building roofs and facades provides a practical route to maximize surface coverage for solar energy harvesting without expanding electrical power infrastructure. For architectural applications, PV modules must deliver high power conversion efficiency (PCE), durability, cost-effectiveness, and be visually appealing. The ability to control the color of PV modules thus emerges as a critical requirement for seamless design integration. Here we present a strategy to enhance the aesthetic integration of PV modules into building surfaces through the development of structural colored interlayers, fabricated by coating polymer foil substrates with colored thin multilayers of optimized thicknesses via Roll-to-Roll (R2R) magnetron sputtering. The proposed technology, which we designate ColorFoil, offers a key advantage of straightforward incorporation with commercial silicon (Si) solar cells to form colored PV modules. The results highlight a scalable and effective route for color-tunable, aesthetically integrated PV modules, offering new opportunities for widespread adoption of solar technology in architecture.