Page 10 - CEMS News Winter 2021
P. 10

  FACULTY NEWS
Faculty research
   Chris Leighton
element that dominates current technologies in computers, smartphones, solar cells, and
so much more.
Leighton’s recent discovery of electrically-induced magnetism in pyrite could create “a full-on materials science revolution,” according to the article’s author. In the article, Leighton points out that pyrite absorbs sunlight about 1,000 times better than silicon, is 100 times cheaper than competitor materials currently used in solar panels, and that the elements needed to manufacture fool’s gold are iron and sulfur, which are highly abundant.
Leighton’s breakthrough study was first published
in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific
journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), when scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota electrically transformed non-magnetic material iron sulfide, or pyrite, into a magnetic material. It was the first time scientists had ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.
This research, which now spans solar cells and spintronics, involves the Leighton Group in collaboration with the groups of Jeff Walter (Augsburg University),
Turan Birol (CEMS), Rafael Fernandes (Physics), Laura Gagliardi (University of Chicago), and Eray Aydil (New York University).
Leighton said the next step
is to continue research to replicate the process at higher temperatures, which the team’s preliminary data suggest should certainly be possible. They also hope to try the process with other materials and to demonstrate potential for real devices.
Russell Holmes
 Distinguished McKnight University Professor
Chris Leighton’s research advancements involving
iron pyrite (fool’s gold) were featured in the December 2020 print issue of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. The article, “The Iron Giant” written by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl lauds iron pyrite as a possible “compound of the future,” comparing
it to silicon, the ubiquitous
Iron pyrite (fool’s gold)
   Chris Leighton
A team of researchers led by
Professor Russell Holmes,
the Ronald L. and Janet
A. Christenson Chair in
Renewable Energy, and Eray
Aydil (NYU) has succeeded
in demonstrating stable
heterojunctions between
metal-halide perovskites
and offered the first in-depth
examination of interfacial
mixing in these structures. The
team consisted of graduate
students Catherine Clark, John
Bangsund, and Wan-Ju Hsu, as
well as Dr. Jennifer Mann from Physical Electronics Inc.
Metal-halide perovskites are a promising semiconductor for solar photoconversion and optoelectronics. Solar cells based on perovskites already rival commercially deployed technologies in terms of efficiency. Currently, perovskite devices rely on architectures that combine the perovskite active layer with adjacent organic or oxide layers. Alternative structures based on perovskite-perovskite heterojunctions have not been widely explored due mainly to ion diffusion and mixing across the interface.
In this new work, researchers demonstrate that this challenge is not a general limitation and that perovskite- perovskite interfaces can be stable. This result opens up new opportunities for device design and engineering that could enhance the stability of existing devices while also enabling new devices that are otherwise inaccessible.
 Russell Holmes
  10 www.cems.umn.edu
    


























































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