The University at Buffalo and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) won a $225,000 grant from the Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to investigate chalcogenide perovskites.

The funds will go towards helping the team develop techniques for fabricating thin film solar devices made from such perovskite materials. The researchers plan to optimize the electronic and optical properties of the materials through defect engineering.

Department of Energy (DoE) funded researchers investigated the electronic properties of 2D hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite sheets, as an alternative to graphene and other materials. The researchers reported that such perovskites could rival graphene in PV applications, since the 2D crystals exhibited efficient photoluminescence, were easier to grow than graphene and it's possible to dope it to make the various varieties of ionic semiconductors needed to beat other 2D materials with tunable electronic/photonic properties.

Scientists created these new forms of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites in atomically thin 2D sheets and first showed how they hold promise as semiconductor materials for photovoltaic applications. Next they showed how they could serve as an alternative to other 2D semiconductors that are widely studied as potential successors to silicon in future electronic devices.

Researchers at the University of Groningen provided new insight into hybrid perovskite traps - the loss of electric charges that happens in both silicon and perovskite, and reduces the efficiency of photovoltaic cells.

The new insight happened by chance. The researchers placed a perovskite crystal in a vacuum chamber in an attempt to cool it down and while pumping out the air, a laser was left on, that excited the crystal. This laser light produced electronic charges in the crystal, which emitted light when they recombined. In this instance the crystal should have emitted green light, but surprisingly, when the air was removed from around it, the green light disappeared too. However, when the air was let back in again, the light emission was restored. So apparently, without air, most charges disappear into the traps.