Perovskites

The Challenge Zinc-air batteries are a promising alternative to Lithium-ion, but they suffer from sluggish oxygen reduction/evolution reactions (ORR/OER). Commercial catalysts like Platinum (Pt) are expensive and unstable. 1. Synthesis: The “Black Powder” Challenge Incorporating volatile alkali metals (like Potassium) into the Perovskite lattice is notoriously difficult due to their high vapor pressure at calcination temperatures ($>800^{\circ}C$). I solved this by developing a low-temperature ($265^{\circ}C$) hydrothermal route, effectively “trapping” the Potassium ions within the lattice. ...

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. ...