The race to design more efficient lights and better screen technology has led material scientists to considerquantum dots in recent years. However, research hasn’t resulted in a truly revolutionary use for these nano-scale crystals just yet. Researchers from the University of Toronto might have figured out how to take quantum dots mainstream by combining them with one of the hot new materials in photovoltaics science–perovskite. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with it. No one cared about perovskite until a few years ago.

Scientists have been working over the years to make quantum dots viable because they have a lot of very desirable light-emitting properties (among other things). A quantum dot is simply a nanocrystal made of semiconductor material. When excited by an electric current, it responds by producing light in a very narrow band of the spectrum. That can mean a display that has very clean, accurate colors.

A top priority in LED research right now is figuring out how to integrate these crystals into a material that can be used long-term for lighting and displays without sacrificing efficiency, and perovskite could be the solution. This substance is an unassuming crystalline organometal, which was first discovered in 1839. Scientists realized several decades ago that it had light absorbing and semiconductor properties, but only in 2009 did solar power researchers take notice. Perovskite turns out to be very a very efficient semiconductor in thin layers, so the University of Toronto team thought it might be good to combine it with quantum dots.

This was easier said than done, though. You can’t just mix two different crystalline structures and hope for the best. They tend to form separate phases that don’t interact well, but you want a smooth transition from one material to the next for this application. To convince the quantum dots and perovskite to forget their differences, researchers built a nanoscale scaffolding around the quantum dots in a colloidal solution. The perovskite crystals were then grown around that shell so the atomic ends of the crystals would link up correctly.

The result of all this is a hybrid material composed of perovskite with embedded quantum dots. The perovskite is able to funnel electrons very efficiently into the quantum dots, which then emit their programmed wavelength of light. So the material exists now, but no devices have been built to demonstrate it. That’s the next step, and the team thinks once that’s done it will be the most efficient LED in the world.