Making a solar energy conversion breakthrough with help from a ferroelectrics pioneer

Designers of solar cells may soon be setting their sights higher, as a discovery by a team of researchers has revealed a class of materials that could be better at converting sunlight into energy than those currently being used in solar arrays. Their research shows how a material can be used to extract power from a small portion of the sunlight spectrum with a conversion efficiency that is above its theoretical maximum—a value called the Shockley-Queisser limit. This finding, which could l