A great deal of research effort has been put in green energy applications in the past few decades based on organic optoelectronics. Compared with conventional inorganic semiconductors, organic counterparts offer a much simpler strategy for low-cost mass production and structural modification. Hence, continuous and intensive academic and industrial research works have been done in these areas. In terms of the materials used, transition-metal complexes with the unique features of the transition metal centers represent a large group of candidates, showing high performance in energy conversion technologies. However, the commonly used transition metals, like Pt(II), Ir(III) and Ru(II), are expensive and of relatively low abundance. Concerning elemental sustainability and marketability, some abundant and cheaper metals should be investigated and further developed to replace these precious metals. Cu(I) complexes have shown their potentiality in solar energy harvesting and light emitting applications, due to their well-studied photophysics and structural diversity. In addition, copper is one of the earth-abundant metals with less toxicity, which makes it competitive to precious transition metals. As a result, a series of rational molecular engineering has been developed to boost the device performance of copper complexes. In this review, the recent progress of copper complexes in the fields of organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), photovoltaic cells (dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and bulk heterojunction solar cells (BHJSCs)) in the past two decades will be presented. Representative examples are chosen for discussion.

在过去的几十年中，基于有机光电技术在绿色能源应用方面进行了大量研究工作。与传统的无机半导体相比，有机对应物为低成本批量生产和结构修改提供了更为简单的策略。因此，在这些领域中已经进行了连续且密集的学术和工业研究工作。就所使用的材料而言，具有过渡金属中心独特特征的过渡金属配合物代表了大量的候选对象，在能量转换技术中表现出很高的性能。但是，常用的过渡金属，如Pt（II），Ir（III）和Ru（II），价格昂贵且丰度相对较低。关于基本的可持续性和适销性，一些富贵和廉价的金属应进行研究并进一步开发，以取代这些贵金属。铜（I）配合物由于其经过充分研究的光物理性质和结构多样性，已显示出在太阳能收集和发光应用中的潜力。另外，铜是地球上的一种金属，毒性较低，这使其与贵重的过渡金属具有竞争性。结果，开发了一系列合理的分子工程技术来提高铜络合物的器件性能。在这篇综述中，将介绍过去二十年来铜络合物在有机发光器件（OLED），光伏电池（染料敏化太阳能电池（DSSCs）和体异质结太阳能电池（BHJSCs））领域中的最新进展。 。选择代表性的例子进行讨论。