The Curious Case of Perovskite Solar Cells.

Part 2.1: Under The Hood.

Photo by Derek Sutton on Unsplash

One-line summary of part 1: Perovskites are a class of materials which are very popular in research in the solar energy domain.

For the rest, please read the article from here:

The curious case of Perovskite Solar Cells.

Picking up from ABX₃..

Let’s start here by defining the reason behind calling them the “metal halide” perovskites. Take a look at the following figure, which shows the most commonly used candidates for the A, B and X in a perovskite solar cell:

Source: Brittman, Sarah & Adhyaksa, Gede & Garnett, Erik. (2015). The expanding world of hybrid perovskites: Materials properties and emerging applications. MRS Communications. 5. 1–20. 10.1557/mrc.2015.6.

As you may already have noticed, the B-cation is a metal (Lead is the most common, but tin is catching up, and so is, uncommonly, Rubidium) and the X-anion belongs to the 17th group of the periodic table of elements, famously called as “halogens”. The salts/chemical compounds made with these halogens are called halides.