<< Polarons are fleeting distortions in a material's atomic lattice that form around a moving electron in a few trillionths of a second, then quickly disappear. As ephemeral as they are, they affect a material's behavior, >>
<< When you put a charge into a material by hitting it with light, like what happens in a solar cell, electrons are liberated, and those free electrons start to move around the material, (..) Soon they are surrounded and engulfed by a sort of bubble of local distortion—the polaron—that travels along with them, (..) Some people have argued that this 'bubble' protects electrons from scattering off defects in the material, and helps explain why they travel so efficiently to the solar cell's contact to flow out as electricity. >> Burak Guzelturk.
<< The hybrid perovskite lattice structure is flexible and soft—like a strange combination of a solid and a liquid at the same time, (..) and this is what allows polarons to form and grow. >> Aaron Lindenberg.
Glennda Chui. First glimpse of polarons forming in a promising next-gen energy material. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Jan 04, 2021.
Burak Guzelturk, Thomas Winkler, et al. Visualization of dynamic polaronic strain fields in hybrid lead halide perovskites. Nat. Mater. doi: 10.1038/ s41563-020-00865-5. 04 Jan 4, 2021.
