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Elusive excited states identified from cutting-edge molecular movies

A molecular process called singlet fission might boost solar-cell efficiency, but the mechanism must first be determined. A technique that probes molecules undergoing this process finally reveals the excited states involved.
  1. Andrew J. Musser

    1. Andrew J. Musser is in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.

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  2. Hannah Stern

    1. Hannah Stern is at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK.

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Over the past two decades, a strategy has emerged for turning waste heat produced by widely used solar cells into useful energy, based on a quantum-mechanical phenomenon called singlet fission1. In a paper in Nature, Neef et al.2 shed light on the steps involved in singlet fission in a molecular semiconductor called pentacene. The findings settle a long-standing debate about the sequence of events and bring us closer to using singlet fission to improve solar-cell efficiencies.

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Nature 616, 255-256 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00980-8

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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