Perovskites power up the solar industry
A promising material could deliver sunny days for renewable energy — if it can expand its reach
LAYER UP Researchers are betting on a class of sunlight-absorbing materials called perovskites to improve today’s solar cells. A perovskite’s cagelike crystal structure (right) surrounds a chunky ion such as methylammonium. The red, purple and orange balls are ions that can be varied so the material absorbs different wavelengths of light in its 3-D form (left).
T. Tibbitts; SOURCES: ROBERT J. CAVA/PRINCETON UNIV.; OSMAN M. BAKR AND OMAR F. MOHAMMED/SCIENCE 2017
Tsutomu Miyasaka was on a mission to build a better solar cell.