We All Know Superheroes. But Did You Know About Super Materials? Meet Perovskites, A Super Material!

Lately superheroes have conquered the big screens. While they all have superpowers, almost every superhero has one object that is unique to him. Captain America has his shield, Iron Man his armour and Spiderman his spider webs. While there are no real-life superheroes with superpowers, there are super materials with incredible characteristics that will shape the modern world. We stand at the brink of new classes of materials. The surge in photovoltaic systems has caused the re-discovery of a family of compounds known as perovskites.
These materials have tremendous potential in the optical and photovoltaic industries. Today, I want to offer you a quick insight into this promising group of material.

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What Is a Perovskite?

Perovskites are combinations of inorganic molecules and organic molecules. Often perovskites are metal halides that arrange in structures such as sheets, rods and clusters, localizing charge carriers within these ordered-structures (1). A perovskite is a molecule that has the same crystal structure as calcium titanium oxide (2). The structure of the macromolecules can be influenced, resulting in the design of 3D, 2D, 1D and even 0D structures, offering many opportunities for various applications in LEDs, photovoltaics and photodetectors (3).

Why Should We Bother About Some Crystal, Which Does Not Even Look Good?

Granted, the dark color of perovskites do not make them more most attractive crystals around. It is not even too rare, but one of the most abundant minerals found on our planet (4).

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Its abundance, is one of its main advantages. Usually photovoltaic cells are made from Silicon crystals, which, while being the second most abundant element in the earth´s crust, is very expensive to produce as it is often found in oxidized forms (kind of like silicon rust) (5). Perovskite solar cells are cheaper to produce (4). Metal halides can be relatively easily made, and the assembly of such into a perovskite solar cells can be done in ordinary laboratories (6). Perovskites have the potential to outperform silicon solar panels within a few years, if research in this area keeps up the rapid pace of development it recently had (7).
Perovskites are also helping to improve the picture quality in our TVs (4). This is achieved by altering the composition of the crystal, enabling to design perovskites that are very specific for certain applications.

The high electron–hole binding energy in low-DN perovskites favors dominant radiative recombination and consequently high PLQY. These figures of merit are critical for high-performance phosphors and LEDs and promisingly can be controlled by the site composition of the perovskite.

This article is a review of low dimension perovskites that outlines some uses in a more detailed way that I can in this post. I highly recommend it.

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It seems like there may be some medical application of perovskites in the form of organometal halide perovskite synaptic devices (7). Apparently perovskites have characteristics that resemble a synapsis. This may enable applications in linking computer with the human nervous system.

My Opinion

I believe that perovskites have a great upside. They already have similar efficiency like silicon-crystal based solar panels (7), while being easier to produce in less sophisticated production facilities. They sadly do not have the same durability as silicon solar panels because they are soluble in water (thus are not very useful in mist environment). However, progress is being made rapidly and it will be very interesting to see what the next few years are going to bring.

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There are also quite a few videos out there. Here is one that I enjoyed watching. It is by Sam Stranks who is a researcher at the renowned Cambridge University. It is a very good introduction to this amazing topic.

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Thank you very much for reading this post! I really enjoy writing these because I have an incentive to find new research developments, which is very enjoyable for a young chemist. This is also my first venture into materials science, so if you have any suggestions about other interesting, new materials please leave them in the comments!
If you found anything about this article that stood out to you, either positive or negative, please let me know. I appreciate positive comments but I am trying to be a better writer so I value your suggestions.
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As always,
Cheers @lesshorrible!