Lecture on Perovskites by Mike Glazer

Yet another gem from the Royal Institution: the 2017 Bragg Lecture by Mike Glazer entitled The Wondrous World of Provskites.

He covers a fair bit of ground here: some personal history (including a wonderful anecdote about one of his mentors, Prof. Helen Megaw), some elementary crystallography (unit cells, symmetry, and stuff), how solid state chemists have a way of bringing a wide variety of structures under a common umbrella (octahedrons sharing corners), some interesting properties (pyroelectricity, piezoelectricity, photovoltaics, …) and applications (for temperature changes, tennis rackets, solar cells, SONAR, ultrasound scans, …). In between all this, you also get glimpses of phase diagrams, defects, intrinsic and extrinsic properties, and materials design. It’s a fascinating tour. [RI has also released a video of the Q&A session.]