Light provides spin

Efficiency from spinning electrons

The sun plays an important role in the use of renewable energy sources. Its radiation energy provides heat and the light it provides can be converted into electricity thanks to photovoltaics. Perovskites, which are crystalline compounds that can be simply manufactured using chemical processes, have been considered a promising means of using the power of sunlight cost effectively for several years now. Under laboratory conditions, prototypes have achieved surprising levels of efficiency.

There is little knowledge about precisely why perovskites are so powerful. ‘Two factors are decisive for generating electrical energy cost-efficiently from sunlight’, says Dr. Daniel Niesner from the Chair of Solid State Physics at FAU. ‘One the one hand, the light must excite as many electrons as possible in a layer that’s as thin as possible. On the other, the electrons must be able to flow as freely as possible to the electrodes that pick up the current.’

Researchers suspect that perovskites make particularly good use of the rotation of electrons for efficient current flow. ‘Each electron has ‘spin’, similar to the intrinsic rotation of a billiard ball’, explains Niesner. ‘As is the case with billiard balls, where left-hand or right-hand spin when they are hit with the cue leads to a curved path on the table, scientists have suspected that rotation and forward movement in electrons in perovskites could also be linked.’

Orderly atomic structure

Physicists at FAU in Erlangen have now confirmed this suspicion for the first time. In their experiments, they used a laser whose light also has spin or a direction of rotation. The result: If a crystal is exposed to light with a left-hand spin, the electrons move to the left. If the direction of the light is reversed, the direction of the flow of electrons also reverses. ‘The experiments clearly demonstrate that the direction of rotation of the electrons and the direction of flow of current are linked.’

Up to now, scientists presumed that the atomic structure of perovskites was too ‘orderly’ for such behaviour. In actual fact, experiments with cooled perovskite crystals show only a very weak link between the direction of rotation of the electrons and the direction of current flow. ‘This changes, however, when the crystals are heated to room temperature because the movement of the atoms leads to fluctuating deviations of the highly-ordered structure’, says Nieser.

‘The heat enables the crystals of perovskite to link the direction of rotation and flow of the electrons. A ‘normal’ crystal couldn’t do that.’

The discovery of the connection between heat and spin in electrons means that the FAU researchers have uncovered a vital aspect of the unusual flow of current in perovskites. Their work could contribute to improving the understanding of the high energy efficiency of these crystals and to developing new materials for photovoltaics in the future.

Further information
Dr. Daniel Niesner
Phone: +49 9131 8528403
daniel.niesner@fau.de

The results have now been published in the renowned journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1805422115 – ‘Structural fluctuations cause spin-split states in tetragonal (CH3NH3)PbI3: Experimental evidence from circular photogalvanic effect’, ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’).