The characteristics of polarons are determined. Free Technical Library News

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Characteristics of polarons determined

19.01.2021

Researchers at Stanford University's SLAC National Linear Accelerator Laboratory used one of their X-ray lasers to track the origin and formation of so-called polarons, and to measure the basic characteristics of these formations. Polarons are deformations of the crystal lattice of a material that arise around moving free electrons and disappear without a trace after trillionths of a second. Despite such a short "lifespan", these deformations, according to scientists, affect some properties of the material and change its behavior, in particular, the response to light photons, which is especially pronounced in materials belonging to the perovskite class.

Perovskites are transparent materials whose name is derived from perovskite, a naturally occurring transparent mineral. About ten years ago, it was noticed that the inclusion of materials of this class in the composition of solar cells can significantly increase the coefficient of conversion of light into electricity. However, working with these materials causes a lot of problems, these materials are unstable, they degrade and quickly break down when exposed to air, they also contain lead, a toxic metal that should not be allowed to come into contact with the environment once again.

But it was in crystals of perovskite, synthesized in one of the laboratories of Stanford University, that polarons were first noticed. For this, the scientists used the LCLS (Linac Coherent Light Source), the most powerful and fastest X-ray free electron laser, which is able to image inside materials with almost atomic resolution and capture the movements of atoms on a time scale of a millionth of a billionth of a second.

During the experiment, the perovskite crystal was illuminated by conventional laser light, the pulse of which was immediately followed by a synchronized X-ray laser pulse, which made it possible to see the reaction of the material sample to light. It was found that the material begins to react to light with a delay measured in tens of trillionths of a second. And the reaction of the material consists in the beginning of the formation of polaron deformations, which at first have a size comparable to the distance between two neighboring atoms in the crystal lattice, and then quickly expand to a diameter of about 5 billionths of a meter, which approximately corresponds to the width of 10 atomic layers. At the same time, the process of polaron formation is very fast, it occurs in just a few picoseconds.

The increased interest from scientists in this phenomenon explains why polarons may be precisely the reason why solar cells made from hybrid perovskites exhibit their inherent high efficiency. And knowing how these deformations of the crystal lattice are formed, developed, plus knowing their parameters, such as shape, size and lifetime, will allow scientists to find answers to many questions, which, in turn, will make the field of solar energy more efficient in the future. and economically viable.

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