Why One Crystal Structure Quietly Runs the Energy Revolution
Ask a materials scientist to name one crystal structure they would take to a desert island, and many will say the same thing: the perovskite. The formula looks almost too simple — ABX₃. A large cation (A) sits in a cage, a smaller cation (B) sits at the center of an octahedron of anions (X, usually oxygen). That’s it. Yet this one arrangement appears in solar cells breaking efficiency records, in cathodes for zinc–air batteries, in solid oxide fuel cells, and in the electrocatalysts splitting water into green hydrogen. ...