Researchers at the Korean UNIST have announced that they have successfully developed a new way to increase energy efficiency of perovskite-based metal-air batteries by using a conducting polymer.

In the cathode of metal-air batteries or fuel cells, oxygen is reduced to metal oxide or water. Catalysts are required to accelerate the reaction. While platinum is an efficient choice, its high price remains a problem. In the study, the team reported that catalytic activity of a provskite material which can be used as a substitute to platinum was dramatically enhanced by simply adding a kind of conducting polymer, polypyrrole.

Researchers at the University of Göttingen, DESY, the Max Planck Institutethe Technical University of Clausthal-Zellerfeld have used perovskites to lay the foundation for a new type of photovoltaic cell. In their method, infrared radiation is converted into electrical energy using a different mechanism from that found in conventional solar cells. The mechanism behind the new solid-state solar cell made of perovskite relies on "polaron excitations", which combine the excitation of electrons and vibrations of the crystal lattice.

"In conventional solar cells, the interaction between the electrons and the lattice vibrations can lead to unwanted losses, causing substantial problems, whereas the polaron excitations in the perovskite solar cell can be created with a fractal structure at certain operating temperatures and last long enough for a pronounced photovoltaic effect to occur," explains the team. "This requires the charges to be in an ordered ground state, however, corresponding to a sort of crystallization of the charges, which therefore allows strong cooperative interactions to occur between the polarons."