Supercomputer simulations make groundbreaking discovery about potential of solar power and LEDs: 'Never been observed be

[Judi Lynn]

Supercomputer simulations make groundbreaking discovery about potential of solar power and LEDs: 'Never been observed before'
Rick Kazmer
Sat, July 27, 2024 at 4:00 AM CDT·3 min read



Scientists from the Texas Advanced Computing Center are gaining a deeper — on the atomic level — understanding about why perovskites are such a good material for converting sunlight into electricity.

The breakthrough was discovered using a supercomputer that found "vortex structures in quasiparticles of electrons and atoms, called polarons," according to a summary, which is heavy on labspeak.

The important thing for energy users across America is that the findings could help to develop new solar cells and LED lighting that have the potential to "reshape the future of illumination," the experts claim.

"These polarons show very intriguing patterns. The atoms rotate around the electron and form vortices that had never been observed before," study co-author Feliciano Giustino, who is the director of the Center for Quantum Materials Engineering at the Oden Institute in Texas, said in the summary.

More:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/supercomputer-simulations-groundbreaking-discovery-potential-090000854.html

[Blues Heron]

1. The problem with more efficient LEDs is people will squander the savings by installing twice as many

[Maninacan]

3. led lighting

LEDS are replacing other outdoor lights with no thought to how bright they are. I was at at campground where they glared in my eyes during the day. Lit up everything at night. No thought to placement or aim.

[Blues Heron]

4. so true, it is everywhere. Neighborhoods lit up like movie sets or prison yards. All security all the time.

Whatever happened to the good old fashioned lamp shade? Light up whatever it is but hide the welding torch-like source! Now we need to wear our sunglasses at night like the song says!

[usonian]

2. I followed many links, and the paper is at arxiv.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13188

Topological polarons in halide perovskites
Jon Lafuente-Bartolome, Chao Lian, Feliciano Giustino

Halide perovskites emerged as a revolutionary family of high-quality semiconductors for solar energy harvesting and energy-efficient lighting. There is mounting evidence that the exceptional optoelectronic properties of these materials could stem from unconventional electron-phonon couplings, and it has been suggested that the formation of polarons and self-trapped excitons could be key to understanding such properties. By performing first-principles simulations with unprecedented detail across the length scales, here we show that halide perovskites harbor a uniquely rich variety of polaronic species, including small polarons, large polarons, and charge density waves, and we explain a variety of experimental observations. We find that these emergent quasiparticles support topologically nontrivial phonon fields with quantized topological charge, making them the first non-magnetic analog of the helical Bloch points found in magnetic skyrmion lattices.