I see several comments here that misunderstand "perovskites", so to be clear: "perovskite" can refer to either the mineral or the crystal structures with the same structure as the mineral. Virtually everything written about "perovskites" refers to perovskite structures; the actual mineral perovskite is just used as a rock (geologists poke at it and miners crush it up.)
Perovskite structures are interesting because they have unique material properties. The range of properties is quite broad: ferroelectric, pyroelectric, and piezoelectric properties, photoelasticity, very high permittivity, et cetera. In popular science news, you will mostly read about potential uses in solar cells, but they are already commonly used in our world: barium titanate is used as a dielectric in capacitors, lead zirconium titanate is used as the piezoelectric crystal in many resonators, lithium niobate is used for optical waveguides and for optical antialiasing filters because of its birefringence.
"While cheaper than CZT detectors, NaI detectors are bulky and produce blurrier images — like taking a photo through a foggy window."
I'm constantly amazed at what these articles do not show. Like if we have an example of a foggy window image and one from CZT and now one from this new sensor, why not show an example of each? A picture is worth a 1,000 words after all, so not including them really does the reader a disservice when reading these articles.
From this, it sounds like it hasn't been integrated into an imaging device yet:
"Record energy resolutions are achieved as 2.5% at 141 keV and 1.0% at 662 keV. Single photon imaging with single point and line 99mTc γ-ray sources showcases the high sensitivity of 0.13%~0.21% cps/Bq. Phantom imaging distinctly delineates individual column sources spaced 7 mm apart, indicative of an impressive spatial resolution of 3.2 mm. These findings lay the groundwork for integrating perovskite detectors into nuclear medicine γ-ray imaging systems, offering a balance of cost-effectiveness and superior performance."
Perovskites are research materials being researched.
Images produced from SPECT cameras have been around for a while. [2]
This is potentially a 16 pixel "camera" which the "image" is a gaussian blob (Figure 1e and 5e) [1].
This is interesting for a variety of reasons but is way overblown in the "camera" or "image" context. It's demonstration that one can make pixelated devices (4x4) of a specific kind of promising material.
Perovskite solar cells, ah yes, the ones that degrade rapidly in sunlight. Good thing they are typically safely tucked away in labs with controlled lighting.
I see several comments here that misunderstand "perovskites", so to be clear: "perovskite" can refer to either the mineral or the crystal structures with the same structure as the mineral. Virtually everything written about "perovskites" refers to perovskite structures; the actual mineral perovskite is just used as a rock (geologists poke at it and miners crush it up.)
Perovskite structures are interesting because they have unique material properties. The range of properties is quite broad: ferroelectric, pyroelectric, and piezoelectric properties, photoelasticity, very high permittivity, et cetera. In popular science news, you will mostly read about potential uses in solar cells, but they are already commonly used in our world: barium titanate is used as a dielectric in capacitors, lead zirconium titanate is used as the piezoelectric crystal in many resonators, lithium niobate is used for optical waveguides and for optical antialiasing filters because of its birefringence.
"While cheaper than CZT detectors, NaI detectors are bulky and produce blurrier images — like taking a photo through a foggy window."
I'm constantly amazed at what these articles do not show. Like if we have an example of a foggy window image and one from CZT and now one from this new sensor, why not show an example of each? A picture is worth a 1,000 words after all, so not including them really does the reader a disservice when reading these articles.
From this, it sounds like it hasn't been integrated into an imaging device yet:
"Record energy resolutions are achieved as 2.5% at 141 keV and 1.0% at 662 keV. Single photon imaging with single point and line 99mTc γ-ray sources showcases the high sensitivity of 0.13%~0.21% cps/Bq. Phantom imaging distinctly delineates individual column sources spaced 7 mm apart, indicative of an impressive spatial resolution of 3.2 mm. These findings lay the groundwork for integrating perovskite detectors into nuclear medicine γ-ray imaging systems, offering a balance of cost-effectiveness and superior performance."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63400-7
Perovskites are research materials being researched.
Images produced from SPECT cameras have been around for a while. [2]
This is potentially a 16 pixel "camera" which the "image" is a gaussian blob (Figure 1e and 5e) [1].
This is interesting for a variety of reasons but is way overblown in the "camera" or "image" context. It's demonstration that one can make pixelated devices (4x4) of a specific kind of promising material.
[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63400-7
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-photon_emission_compute...
Hmm, why do I know this word "perovskite". Wikipedia gives me no clues, just some mineral.
Possible source: Solar panels with this material were hyped a couple years ago.
Ah, that's what it was for me.
Roll-to-roll fabricated perovskite solar cells under ambient room conditions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39998740
Perovskite solar cells, ah yes, the ones that degrade rapidly in sunlight. Good thing they are typically safely tucked away in labs with controlled lighting.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2024/tc/d4tc0208...
IIRC it was some different type of imaging sensor, so looked it up that way
They are used in thin-film solar panel development. Not sure anyone has cracked the big problem with them, which is durability.
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Where are the pictures?