Heayoung Yoon
University of Utah, UT·Materials Science·Early-career
Solar cells made from metal halide perovskites, a class of crystalline semiconductors, are cheap to process and convert sunlight very efficiently, but they degrade quickly. Defects in the crystals, ions that move through the material, and its microscopic grain structure have all been blamed, but the physical causes are not well understood.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
Physics
- Topics
metal halide perovskites
perovskite solar cells
photovoltaics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Visualize local defects such as mobile ions and charge carrier dynamics in metal halide perovskites during degradation and recovery, using electron-beam and near-field optical probes inside a scanning electron microscope.
- Apply isolated and mixed environmental stressors in real time to individual perovskite grains, surfaces and interfaces to link microstructure to performance loss.
- Fabricate nanocontacts on single grains and grain boundaries to quantify ion migration and local carrier transport, and analyze the data with 2D/3D Poisson drift-diffusion models.
More about the research
Most measurement tools average properties over areas much larger than a single grain, which is typically smaller than a micrometer. They can therefore miss the local defects that matter.
Why it matters
Perovskite solar cells could provide low-cost solar power, but their poor stability blocks real-world use. Identifying which microscopic defects and ion movements drive degradation could guide chemists and engineers toward more durable perovskite materials. The local measurement methods could also help the electronics industry study defects in other semiconductors.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Michael McGehee
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Materials Science
Synthesize all-inorganic triple-halide perovskites with band gaps of 1.9–2.1 eV and map which compositions mix into a single stable phase, using X-ray diffraction and composition analysis.
Lea Nienhaus
Rice University, TX·Chemistry·Early-career
Develop new pairs of metal halide perovskites and triplet-accepting organic molecules to test why annihilator molecules such as diphenylanthracene work well in solution but poorly in solid-state upconversion.
Ou Chen
Brown University, RI·Chemistry
Test whether ultrathin perovskite nanowires can be built up from single metal-halide octahedra under mild, slow conditions, using in situ and ex situ characterization to reveal how they grow.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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