From Material Innovation to Scalable Deployment: Technological Evolution and Emerging Frontiers of Building‐Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)

Building‐integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are emerging as a strategic interface technology linking building decarbonization and urban climate resilience, with research rapidly shifting from device‐level efficiency enhancement to system integration and urban‐scale deployment. Yet, coherent frameworks linking devices, components, buildings, and cities remain limited. This study presents a structured scientometric analysis of 2525 core publications (2003–2024), integrating co‐occurrence mapping, co‐citation clustering, temporal evolution modeling, and burst detection to map the field's structural evolution and thematic frontiers. Findings reveal three developmental phases: an initial focus on prototyping and grid integration; a subsequent shift toward multi‐physics modeling and building‐level simulation; and a recent expansion into high‐performance material integration, AI‐driven operation, carbon analytics, and urban deployment modeling. Global collaboration networks show growing multipolarity, with research output shaped by policy incentives. China leads in productivity and centrality, while emerging markets gain prominence. Institutional pathways diverge between materials–systems and architectural integration, and journals increasingly support interdisciplinary knowledge exchange across these domains. The evolution of BIPV is fundamentally driven by the cross‐scale transmission of performance criteria and boundary conditions, transforming technical metrics into deployable, verifiable strategies. Future research should prioritize engineering‐oriented evaluation of multifunctional materials for building applications, intelligent control systems that incorporate degradation and uncertainty, co‐optimization frameworks for thermal and visual comfort at façade boundaries, and urban deployment models that integrate semantic accuracy, hosting capacity, and grid‐integration costs. This study reconstructs BIPV's multi‐scalar knowledge landscape and proposes a capability framework for scalable and auditable deployment, offering strategic alignment across policy, practice, and scholarly agendas. This article is categorized under: Sustainable Energy > Solar Energy Cities and Transportation > Buildings Energy and Power Systems > Distributed Generation