Optoelectronic materials that are capable of converting the energy of light into electricity, and electricity into light, have promising applications as light-emitting, energy-harvesting, and sensing technologies. However, devices made of these materials are often plagued by inefficiency, losing significant useful energy as heat. To break the current limits of efficiency, new principles of light-electricity conversion are needed.
For instance, many materials that exhibit efficient optoelectronic properties are constrained by inversion symmetry, a physical property that limits engineers' control of electrons in the material and their options for designing novel or efficient devices. In research published today in Nature Nanotechnology, a team of materials scientists and engineers, led by Jian Shi, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, used a strain gradient in order to break that inversion symmetry, creating a novel optoelectronic phenomenon in the promising material molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)—for the first time.
To read more, click here.