Methylammonium lead iodide perovskite In the past few years, perovskite solar cells have made large leaps forward in efficiency, recently achieving energy conversion with up to 16 percent efficiency. These simple and promising devices are easy enough to make and are made up of earth abundant materials, but little work has been done to explore their atomic makeup. Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Columbia University used high-energy x-rays at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) to characterize the structure of methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3) in titanium oxide – the active material in high-performance perovskite solar cells. Their results are reported in a paper published online in Nano Letters on November 22, 2013, Photoluminescent properties of these materials are thought to depend sensitively on the degree of structural order and defects. To characterize the structure, the researchers used beamline X17A at NSLS to study samples of the MAPbI3. Atomic pair distribution function analysis of x-ray diffraction data revealed that 30 percent of the material forms a tetragonal perovskite phase, while 70 percent exists in a disordered state. The presence of disordered material correlates with strong changes in the photoluminescence and absorbance spectra. Read more at: Phys.org
The post Disorder on the nanoscale may be responsible for solar-cell efficiency has been published on Technology Org.
#materials
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'
No comments:
Post a Comment