2D PV to rival graphene

This new form of perovskite could have implications for future semiconductors.

A popular PV material called "perovskites" can rival graphene when grown in hybrid monolayers one atom thin, according to the US Department of Energy-funded researchers. This high energy material is easier to grow than graphene and can be doped to make the various varieties of ionic semiconductors needed to beat other 2D materials with tuneable electronic/photonic properties.

"The high-quality 2D crystals exhibit efficient photoluminescence, and color tuning could be achieved by changing sheet thickness as well as composition via the synthesis of related materials," the researchers said in Science.

The DoE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences funded the discovery with the help of its National Center for Electron Microscopy and Molecular Foundry (using a transmission electron microscopy and cathodoluminescence microscopy) and its Advanced Light Source (a grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering machine) at the DoE's Office of Science User Facilities and the National Institute for Health, using X-ray crystallography.

2D nanomaterials are already the subject of intense research throughout the semiconductor industry because they mark the end-of-the-road in semiconductor scaling, being just a single atom thin. Also 2D materials exhibit electronic properties that are unique and multiplied exponentially, in some cases, over thin films just a few atomic layers thick.

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