Chemical engineering of methylammonium lead iodide/bromide perovskites: tuning of opto-electronic properties and photovoltaic performance†
Abstract
Hybrid (organic–inorganic) lead trihalide perovskites have attracted much attention in recent years due to their exceptionally promising potential for application in solar cells. Here a controlled one-step method is presented where PbCl2 is combined with three equivalents methylammonium halide (MAX, with X = I and/or Br) in polar solvents to form MAPb(I1−xBrx)3 perovskite films upon annealing in air at 145 °C. The procedure allows for a linear increment of the semiconductor bandgap from 1.60 eV to 2.33 eV by increasing the Br content. A transition from a tetragonal to a cubic structure is found when the Br fraction is larger than 0.3. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy investigations shows that the increase of Br content is accompanied by a shift of the valence band edge to lower energy. Simultaneously, the conduction band moves to higher energy, but this shift is less pronounced. Time-resolved single-photon counting experiments of the perovskite materials on mesoporous TiO2 show faster decay kinetics for Br containing perovskites, indicative of improved electron injection into TiO2. Interestingly, kinetics of MAPbI2.7Br0.3Cly on TiO2 scaffold became faster after prolonged excitation during the measurement. In solar cell devices, MAPbI2.7Br0.3Cly yielded best performance, giving more than 14% power conversion efficiency when used in combination with an n-type contact consisting of fluorine-doped tinoxide glass coated with dense TiO2 and a mesoporous Al2O3 scaffold, and a p-type contact, spiro-MeOTAD/Ag.