A research team, led by University of Minnesota Professor K. Andre Mkhoyan, has made a discovery that blends the best of two sought-after qualities for touchscreens and smart windows—transparency and conductivity.
The atomic arrangement of both the BaSnO3 crystal and the metallic line defect. Image credit UMN
The researchers have observed metallic lines in a perovskite crystal. Perovskites are abundant in the Earth’s center, and barium stannate (BaSnO3) is one such crystal. However, it has not been studied extensively for metallic properties because of the prevalence of more conductive materials like metals or semiconductors. The finding was made using advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a technique that can form images with magnifications of up to 10 million.