1. Mechanisms of exceptional grain growth and stability in formamidinium lead triiodide thin films for perovskite solar cells.
- Author
-
Yadavalli, Srinivas K., Dai, Zhenghong, Hu, Mingyu, Dong, Qingshun, Li, Wenhao, Zhou, Yuanyuan, Zia, Rashid, and Padture, Nitin P.
- Subjects
- *
THIN films , *SOLAR cells , *GRAIN growth , *GRAIN size , *THERMAL stability - Abstract
Pure formamidinium lead triiodide (α-FAPbI 3) organic-inorganic halide perovskite (OIHP) semiconductor is very attractive for use as light absorber in the new thin-film perovskite solar cells (PSCs) technology. This is primarily because of its superior thermal stability, more suitable bandgap, and compositional simplicity. However, the existence of the photo-inactive non-perovskite δ-FAPbI 3 polymorph ('yellow' phase) is a major hurdle in the path towards the development of α-FAPbI 3 -based PSCs. Also, there is general consensus that the fine-grained nature of OIHP thin films is detrimental to the environmental stability and performance of the resulting PSCs. In this context, here we take advantage of the polymorphism in FAPbI 3 , and use solvent-vapor-assisted δ-to-α phase transformation to induce exceptional grain coarsening (up to 50-fold) in 0.3-μm thickness FAPbI 3 thin films, resulting in an unprecedented average grain size of up to ~9 μm. The underlying mechanisms are elucidated based on the results from a combination of some key experiments, which involve studying systematically the effects of time, temperature, initial grain size, and solvent polarity index (PI). The ultra-coarse-grained α-FAPbI 3 thin films show dramatically improved environmental stability over their medium-grained counterparts, which is explained based on grain-boundary density arguments. PSCs made using the ultra-coarse-grained α-FAPbI 3 thin films have improved photovoltaic (PV) performance, but it is somewhat modest. This is attributed to the underestimation of the effective grain size relevant to photocarrier dynamics. Image, graphical abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF