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There are numerous potential applications for superconducting tapes based on YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-x) (YBCO) films coated onto metallic substrates. A long-established goal of more than 15 years has been to understand the magnetic-flux pinning mechanisms that allow films to maintain high current densities out to high magnetic fields. In fact, films carry one to two orders of magnitude higher current densities than any other form of the material. For this reason, the idea of further improving pinning has received little attention. Now that commercialization of YBCO-tape conductors is much closer, an important goal for both better performance and lower fabrication costs is to achieve enhanced pinning in a practical way. In this work, we demonstrate a simple and industrially scaleable route that yields a 1.5-5-fold improvement in the in-magnetic-field current densities of conductors that are already of high quality.

Transport properties of aliovalent-ion-doped BiFeO3 (BFO) thin films have been studied in order to identify the cause of high leakage currents. Doping of 2at.% Ti4+ ions increased the dc resistivity by more than three orders of magnitude. In contrast, doping of 2+ ions such as Ni2+ reduced the dc resistivity by two orders of magnitude. Current–voltage (I–V) characteristics indicated that the main conduction mechanism for pure and Ni2+ doped BFO was space charge limited, which was associated with the free-carriers trapped by the oxygen vacancies, whereas in the Ti4+ doped BFO, field-assisted ionic conduction was dominant.

Twenty years ago in a series of amazing discoveries it was found that a large family of ceramic cuprate materials exhibited superconductivity at temperatures above, and in some cases well above, that of liquid nitrogen. Imaginations were energized by the thought of applications for zero-resistance conductors cooled with an inexpensive and readily available cryogen. Early optimism, however, was soon tempered by the hard realities of these new materials: brittle ceramics are not easily formed into long flexible conductors; high current levels require near-perfect crystallinity; and--the downside of high transition temperature--performance drops rapidly in a magnetic field. Despite these formidable obstacles, thousands of kilometres of high-temperature superconducting wire have now been manufactured for demonstrations of transmission cables, motors and other electrical power components. The question is whether the advantages of superconducting wire, such as efficiency and compactness, can outweigh the disadvantage: cost. The remaining task for materials scientists is to return to the fundamentals and squeeze as much performance as possible from these wonderful and difficult materials.

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Recently, we and others have proposed screening criteria for “defect-tolerant” photovoltaic (PV) absorbers, identifying several classes of semiconducting compounds with electronic structures similar to those of hybrid lead–halide perovskites. In this work, we reflect on the accuracy and prospects of these new design criteria through a combined experimental and theoretical approach. We construct a model to extract photoluminescence lifetimes of six of these candidate PV absorbers, including four (InI, SbSI, SbSeI, and BiOI) for which time-resolved photoluminescence has not been previously reported. The lifetimes of all six candidate materials exceed 1 ns, a threshold for promising early stage PV device performance. However, there are variations between these materials, and none achieve lifetimes as high as those of the hybrid lead–halide perovskites, suggesting that the heuristics for defect-tolerant semiconductors are incomplete. We explore this through first-principles point defect calculations and Shockley–Read–Hall recombination models to describe the variation between the measured materials. In light of these insights, we discuss the evolution of screening criteria for defect tolerance and high-performance PV materials.

Fluorene‐free perovskite light‐emitting diodes (LEDs) with low turn‐on voltages, higher luminance and sharp, color‐pure electroluminescence are obtained by replacing the F8 electron injector with ZnO, which is directly deposited onto the CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite using spatial atmospheric atomic layer deposition. The electron injection barrier can also be reduced by decreasing the ZnO electron affinity through Mg incorporation, leading to lower turn‐on voltages.

Bismuth‐based compounds have recently gained increasing attention as potentially nontoxic and defect‐tolerant solar absorbers. However, many of the new materials recently investigated show limited photovoltaic performance. Herein, one such compound is explored in detail through theory and experiment: bismuth oxyiodide (BiOI). BiOI thin films are grown by chemical vapor transport and found to maintain the same tetragonal phase in ambient air for at least 197 d. The computations suggest BiOI to be tolerant to antisite and vacancy defects. All‐inorganic solar cells (ITO|NiOx|BiOI|ZnO|Al) with negligible hysteresis and up to 80% external quantum efficiency under select monochromatic excitation are demonstrated. The short‐circuit current densities and power conversion efficiencies under AM 1.5G illumination are nearly double those of previously reported BiOI solar cells, as well as other bismuth halide and chalcohalide photovoltaics recently explored by many groups. Through a detailed loss analysis using optical characterization, photoemission spectroscopy, and device modeling, direction for future improvements in efficiency is provided. This work demonstrates that BiOI, previously considered to be a poor photocatalyst, is promising for photovoltaics.