Organic-inorganic halide perovskites are a class of materials and semiconductors that grow from chemical solutions and have shown great potential for use in solar energy, detection, and many other electronic devices thanks to their unique properties, and are cost-effective as compared to traditional silicon-based devices.
In spite of their promise in the next generation of optoelectronic devices, much is still left to be learned about their properties and device performance.
Assistant Professor Mahshid Ahmadi (MSE) along with researchers from ORNL are using advanced scanning probe microscopy to understand the local behavior of these materials under device operation condition, such as sunlight illumination in solar cells.
By using Kelvin probe force microscopy, Ahmadi can look at how these materials react at the interface with metallic electrode at the microscopic level, giving her and other researchers a better understanding of how to engineer these materials to improve electronic device performance.