NREL scientists developed a spin-controlled LED using a III-V semiconductor and chiral halide perovskite, enhancing optoelectronics by increasing data speeds and reducing power usage, funded by CHOISE.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have led a research effort resulting in advances that couldcould enable a broader range of currently unimagined optoelectronic devices.

The researchers, whose previous innovation included incorporating a perovskite layer that allowed the creation of a new type of polarized light-emitting diode (LED) that emits spin-controlled photons at room temperature without the use of magnetic fields or ferromagnetic contacts, now have gone a step further by integrating a III-V semiconductor optoelectronic structure with a chiral halide perovskite semiconductor. That is, they transformed an existing commercialized LED into one that also controls the spin of electrons. The results provide a pathway toward transforming modern optoelectronics, a field that relies on the control of light and encompasses LEDs, solar cells, and telecommunications lasers, among other devices.

Implications of the Research

“It’s up to one’s imagination where this might go or where this might end up,” said Matthew Beard, a senior research fellow at NREL and coauthor of the newly published Nature article.

Beard also serves as director of the Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences within DOE. The reported research was funded by CHOISE and relied on a broad range of scientific expertise drawn from NREL, the Colorado School of Mines, the University of Utah, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Universite de Lorraine in France.

Goals of CHOISE

The goal of CHOISE is to understand control over the interconversion of charge, spin, and light using carefully designed chemical systems. In particular, the work focuses on control over the electron spin that can be either “up” or “down.” Most current-day optoelectronic devices rely on the interconversion between charge and light. However, spin is another property of electrons, and control over the spin could enable a wide plethora of new effects and functionality. The researchers published a paper in 2021 in which they reported how by using two different perovskite layers they were able to control the spin by creating a filter that blocks electrons “spinning” in the wrong direction.

They hypothesized at the time that advancements could be made in optoelectronics if they could successfully incorporate the two SciTechDaily