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Materials science

Porosity in a single crystal

Nature volume 495, pages 180–181 (2013)Cite this article

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A low-temperature synthesis has been developed to make single crystals of titanium dioxide that contain pores tens to hundreds of nanometres in size. This opens the way to cheap, highly efficient optoelectronic devices. See Letter p.215

The discovery that nanoparticles of metal-oxide semiconductors can be used to make highly efficient solar-cell devices using low-cost processes has attracted a tremendous research effort worldwide1,2. One of the main challenges is to make semiconductors that have a high surface area, but maintain good charge transport. Nanoparticles have high surface areas, but when used in the composite materials that are required for third-generation solar cells, a large number of interfaces are generated between particles; the more interfaces there are, the greater is the hindrance of electron transport across the nanoparticle network, and the less efficient is the device. In this week's issue, Crossland et al.3 (page 215) report that this problem can be solved if the network is replaced by a porous single crystal of a semiconductorFootnote 1.

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Figure 1: Mesoporous single crystals.

REF. 3

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion3 were published online on 6 March 2013.

References

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  1. Caterina Ducati is in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3QZ, UK.,

    Caterina Ducati

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  1. Caterina Ducati
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Correspondence to Caterina Ducati.

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Ducati, C. Porosity in a single crystal. Nature 495, 180–181 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11961

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