New discovery settles long-standing debate about photovoltaic materials

Scientists have theorized that organometallic halide perovskites-- a class of light harvesting "wonder" materials for applications in solar cells and quantum electronics-- are so promising due to an unseen yet highly controversial mechanism called the Rashba effect. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have now experimentally proven the existence of the effect in bulk perovskites, using short microwave bursts of light to both produce and then record a rhythm, much like m...