This week's Colloquium in Physics & Astronomy

The curious case of hybrid halide perovskites Prof Pablo Docampo BCMaterials 15:00, Thursday 16 July 2026 Physics Seminar Room (Building 46/5081) Hybrid perovskites continue to surprise and challenge us, exhibiting a rich interplay between ionic motion, structural complexity, and optoelectronic function. In this talk, Prof Docampo will follow three research threads from his laboratory that illustrate how embracing these complexities can lead to deeper understanding of the fundamental device physics. First, he will focus on ion migration, long considered a source of instability and hysteresis in devices, and present a new technique his group has developed to extract meaningful physical insights from it: stabilise and pulse (SaP). Here, a combination of a stabilising bias and rapid voltage pulses is applied to working devices, which allows probing the ionic accumulation and interfacial band alignment in working devices, providing a powerful tool for understanding charge extraction and recombination under realistic conditions. It is further shown how self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) modulate the work function of the transparent conductive oxide and control recombination and extraction characteristics. In the second part of the talk, Prof Docampo will explore the diverse world of layered perovskites. These low-dimensional structures offer a platform for tuning stability and functionality through careful control of organic-inorganic interactions. He will present recent work on the growth of thin layers of these materials over standard, 3D perovskites, highlighting the dual challenges of stability and charge transport. Finally, he will discuss his work on chiral-chiral junctions, where chiral perovskite layers are interfaced with chiral SAMs to probe spin-selective charge transport, opening a further route to controlling device function through interfacial design.

poster