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Science and Technology
科技版块
Mobile phones
手机
Through a glass, brightly
透过玻璃看，很明亮
Toughening up phone screens with perovskites
用钙钛矿增韧手机屏幕
SINCE 2006, when Corning, an American glassmaker, developed Gorilla Glass to give Apple’s first iPhone a scratch-resistance screen, many other types of toughened glass have appeared for use in handsets.
自2006年以来，美国玻璃制造商康宁公司开发了钢化玻璃，为苹果第一款iPhone提供防刮擦屏幕，此后，许多其他类型的钢化玻璃也用在手机中。
But as rugged as they are, people keep cracking and breaking them.
尽管它们很耐用，但是人们还是把手机屏摔碎了。
Jingwei Hou thinks he has found a way to prevent that.
侯经纬认为他已经找到了手机屏防摔碎的方法。
Dr Hou and his colleagues at the University of Queensland, in Australia, are among a number of researchers working on a group of materials called perovskites.
澳大利亚昆士兰大学的侯博士和他的同事们是钙钛矿材料的众多研究者之一。
The original perovskite, calcium titanium oxide, is a mineral discovered in the Ural mountains in 1839 and named after Count Lev Perovski, a Russian mineralogist.
最初的钙钛矿，钙钛氧化物，是1839年在乌拉尔山脉发现的一种矿物，以俄罗斯矿物学家列夫·钙夫斯基伯爵命名。
Since then, the name has come to be used for a number of materials that share a similar crystal structure.
从那时起，这个名字被用来指代许多具有相似晶体结构的材料。
Much of the interest in perovskites comes because those which combine metal atoms with chlorine, bromine or iodine (members of a group of elements called halogens) are semiconductors.
人们对钙钛矿的兴趣很大，因为那些将金属原子与氯、溴或碘（卤素元素组的成员）结合在一起就是半导体。
This makes them potentially useful in a variety of electronics.
这使得它们在各种电子产品应用方面具有相当大的潜力。
In particular, one promising feature of metal halides is that they can be used to make new types of solar cells which are more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than the silicon-based cells currently employed.
特别是，金属卤化物一个非常棒特点是，它们可以用来制造新型太阳能电池，这种电池比目前使用的硅基电池将太阳光转化为电能的效率更高。
Oxford PV, a British company, is bringing some of the first perovskite solar cells to market.
英国牛津光伏公司将首批钙钛矿型太阳能电池推向市场。
However, what works in one direction will often work in the other, and so it is with perovskites.
然而，在一个方向起作用的东西通常在另一个方向起作用，钙钛矿也是如此。
This means that instead of converting sunlight into electricity, metal-halide perovskites can operate in reverse, by emitting light in response to an electric current.
这意味着金属卤化物钙钛矿可以反向工作，不需要将阳光转化为电能，而是可以通过发光来响应电流。
An array of tiny specks of perovskites could therefore work like a grid of LEDs in a display screen.
因此，钙钛矿的微小斑点阵列可以像显示屏上网格状的LED一样工作。
To produce such screens, Dr Hou and his team developed a way to bind tiny "nanocrystals" of lead-halide perovskites into a specially treated synthetic glass composite.
为了制造这种屏幕，侯博士和他的团队开发了一种方法，将微小的卤化铅钙钛矿“纳米晶体”结合到经过特殊处理的合成玻璃复合材料中。
As these nanocrystals are extremely sensitive, and decay rapidly if exposed to moisture in the air, being bound up in the glass protects them.
由于这些纳米晶体极为敏感，如果暴露在湿空气中，会迅速衰败，因此被包裹在玻璃中可以保护它们。
It also prevents lead ions, which are toxic, leaching out of the material. At the end of their lives, the screens would be recyclable.
它还可以防止有毒的铅离子从材料中渗出。在他们的生命结束时，屏幕将是可回收的。
A study Dr Hou carried out in collaboration with teams from Britain and France, which was published recently in Science, showed that perovskite screens made in this way were efficient light emitters able to produce sharp, bright images.
侯博士与英国和法国的研究团队合作进行的一项研究最近在《科学》杂志上发表，该研究表明，以这种方式制造的钙钛矿屏幕是高效的发光体，能够产生清晰、明亮的图像。
The light could also be tuned to different colours by altering the nanocrystals' characteristics.
通过改变纳米晶体的特性，光也可以被调成不同的颜色。
An added bonus was that the screens were extremely tough, because of the way the nanocrystals bonded with the glass.
另外一个好处是，由于纳米晶体与玻璃的结合方式，屏幕非常坚硬。
That was helped by the mechanical structure of the glass (known technically as a zeolitic imidazolate framework) having a spongelike atomic arrangement.
这得益于具有玻璃海绵状原子排列的机械结构（技术上称为沸石咪唑盐框架）。
This provides a degree of flexibility, thus avoiding breakage problems caused by brittleness.
这提供了一定程度的灵活性，从而避免了脆性造成的断裂问题。
In as much as anything can be considered unbreakable, perovskite screens just might be that, reckons Dr Hou—and they might be used not just for phones, but also for products ranging from televisions and computers to lighting.
侯博士认为，钙钛矿结构的屏幕几乎摔不破，它们可能不仅用于手机，还用于电视机、电脑和照明等产品。
But he does think it could take five to ten years of development before this will happen.
但他认为这需要五到十年的发展才能实现。
In the meantime, people should take a bit more care with the screens on their devices.
与此同时，人们应该更加小心不要摔碎了设备上的屏幕。
