LEDs made from perovskite, a titanium and calcium crystal are a potential alternative to silicon-based ones

Dawei Di at Zhejiang University in China and his colleagues have developed an infrared perovskite LED device that lasts for more than 10,000 hours, similar to typical silicon LEDs.

The next best perovskite LEDs had only lasted for a few hundred hours before becoming unstable.

The key to this improved stability, is the introduction of a molecule called sulfobetaine 10 (SFB10), which is typically used as a detergent. The molecule attracts positive and negative ions that would normally move freely around in the perovskite crystal structure and compromise its stability. But with SFB10, the ions are prevented from moving.