Scientific Achievement
Molecular scale understanding of local structure and its influence on solar cell performance.
Significance and Impact
Linking local structure to solar properties enables directed design of more efficient materials.
Research Details
- Organo-lead halide perovskites are mixed organic-inorganic materials with great promise for solar cells. Their band gap (thus photovoltage) can be tuned by mixing halide composition (e.g. iodide/bromide).
- We combined high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy and theory to probe local structure around lead sites in mixed I/Br perovskites, to understand functional-structural relationships in these materials.
- We found significant structural disorder: randomly distributed halides, and thermal distortions for all compositions that greatly increase band gaps.
