Exceptionally Stable CH3NH3PbI3 Films in Moderate Humid Environmental Condition.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wang B
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5054937 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Ferroelectricity has been proposed as a plausible mechanism to explain the high photovoltaic conversion efficiency in organic-inorganic perovskites; however, convincing experimental evidence in support of this hypothesis is still missing. Identifying and distinguishing ferroelectricity from other properties, such as piezoelectricity, ferroelasticity, etc., is typically nontrivial because these phenomena can coexist in many materials. In this work, a combination of microscopic and nanoscale techniques provides solid evidence for the existence of ferroelastic domains in both CH3NH3PbI3 polycrystalline films and single crystals in the pristine state and under applied stress. Experiments show that the configuration of CH3NH3PbI3 ferroelastic domains in single crystals and polycrystalline films can be controlled with applied stress, suggesting that strain engineering may be used to tune the properties of this material. No evidence of concomitant ferroelectricity was observed. Because grain boundaries have an impact on the long-term stability of organic-inorganic perovskite devices, and because the ferroelastic domain boundaries may differ from regular grain boundaries, the discovery of ferroelasticity provides a new variable to consider in the quest for improving their stability and enabling their widespread adoption.
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Project description:The fabrication of high-quality organic-inorganic hybrid halide perovskite layers is the key prerequisite for the realization of high efficient photon energy harvest and electric energy conversion in their related solar cells. In this article, we report a novel fabrication technique of CH3NH3PbI3 layers based on high temperature chemical vapor reaction. CH3NH3PbI3 layers have been prepared by the reaction of PbI2 films which were deposited by pulsed laser deposition, with CH3NH3I vapor at various temperatures from 160 °C to 210 °C. X-ray diffraction patterns confirm the formation of pure phase, and photoluminescence spectra show the strong peak at around 760 nm. Scanning electron microscopy images confirm the significantly increased average grain size from nearly 1 μm at low reaction temperature of 160 °C to more than 10 μm at high reaction temperature of 200 °C. The solar cells were fabricated, and short-circuit current density of 15.75 mA/cm2, open-circuit voltage of 0.49 V and fill factor of 71.66% have been obtained.
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Project description:Hybrid organic-inorganic halide CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite films are deposited on anodized aluminum oxide templates with the different pore diameters via one-step spin coating method. The obvious 0.082 eV blue shift of optical band gap is observed in films with decreasing the diameters of pores from 400 to 30 nm. And numerical simulations based on finite element modeling are carried out to represent the absorption edge and consistent with the experiment results. It is interesting that the films show the intense photoluminescence with the excitation intensity of less than 1 μW. Moreover, the photoluminescence intensity is increased with increasing pore diameters, which is attributed to the radiative recombination rate of photogenerated electrons and holes. These results pave a way for the further understanding of tunable photophysical properties of perovskite films.
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Project description:Hybrid halide perovskite thin films are applicable in a wide range of devices such as light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and photodetectors. The optoelectronic properties of perovskites together with their simple and inexpensive film deposition methods make these materials a viable alternative to established materials in these devices. However, the potential of perovskite materials is compromised by the limitations of the existing deposition methods, which suffer from trade-off among suitability for large-scale industrial production in a batch or roll-to-roll manner, deposition area, film quality, and costs. We addressed these limitations by developing a deposition method that is inexpensive, applicable to large substrate areas, scalable, and yields high-quality perovskite films. In this study, the low-cost electrodeposition (ED) method and sequential exposure to reagent vapors produce CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite films with thickness nonuniformity below 9% on a centimeter scale. PbO2 films are electrodeposited first and then undergo two vapor conversion steps, with HI vapor in the first step and CH3NH3I vapor in the second step. The second step yields CH3NH3PbI3 films that are continuous and consist of micrometer-sized grains. This process allows the preparation of both α- and β-phase CH3NH3PbI3 films, offers a simple means to control the film thickness, and works over a wide range of film thicknesses. In this work, films with thicknesses ranging from 100 nm to 10 μm were prepared. ED and vapor conversion are inherently scalable techniques and hence the process described herein could benefit application areas in which large device areas and throughput are required, such as the production of solar cells.
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Project description:Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites are exciting candidates for next-generation solar cells, with CH3NH3PbI3 being one of the most widely studied. While there have been intense efforts to fabricate and optimize photovoltaic devices using CH3NH3PbI3, critical questions remain regarding the crystal structure that governs its unique properties of the hybrid perovskite material. Here we report unambiguous evidence for crystallographic twin domains in tetragonal CH3NH3PbI3, observed using low-dose transmission electron microscopy and selected area electron diffraction. The domains are around 100-300 nm wide, which disappear/reappear above/below the tetragonal-to-cubic phase transition temperature (approximate 57 °C) in a reversible process that often 'memorizes' the scale and orientation of the domains. Since these domains exist within the operational temperature range of solar cells, and have dimensions comparable to the thickness of typical CH3NH3PbI3 films in the solar cells, understanding the twin geometry and orientation is essential for further improving perovskite solar cells.
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Project description:In this paper we explain the temperature dependence of excitonic effective mass and charge carrier conduction mechanism occurs in CH3NH3PbI3-xClx thin films prepared by chemical dip coating (CDC), spray pyrolysis (Spray) and repeated dipping-withdrawing (Dipping). Hall Effect study confirmed that prepared CH3NH3PbI3-xClx samples are p-type semiconductor having carrier concentration of the order of ~ 1016 cm-3. The charge carrier mobility, mean free path and mean free life time were found to decrease with increasing temperature due to polaronic effect. The excitonic effective mass is estimated to (0.090-0.196)me and excitonic binding energy (15-33) meV, well consistent with Wannier-Mott hydrogenic model and the nature of exciton is likely to be Mott-Wannier type. From electrical measurement, it was observed that charge carrier conduction in CH3NH3PbI3-xClx is governed by migration of [Formula: see text] and CH3N [Formula: see text] vacancies and vacancy-assisted diffusion processes depending on temperature.
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