Dipolar cations confer defect tolerance in wide-bandgap metal halide perovskites

Abstract

Efficient wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells (PSCs) enable high-efficiency tandem photovoltaics when combined with crystalline silicon and other low-bandgap absorbers. However, wide-bandgap PSCs today exhibit performance far inferior to that of sub-1.6-eV bandgap PSCs due to their tendency to form a high density of deep traps. Here, we show that healing the deep traps in wide-bandgap perovskites—in effect, increasing the defect tolerance via cation engineering—enables further performance improvements in PSCs. We achieve a stabilized power conversion efficiency of 20.7% for 1.65-eV bandgap PSCs by incorporating dipolar cations, with a high open-circuit voltage of 1.22 V and a fill factor exceeding 80%. We also obtain a stabilized efficiency of 19.1% for 1.74-eV bandgap PSCs with a high open-circuit voltage of 1.25 V. From density functional theory calculations, we find that the presence and reorientation of the dipolar cation in mixed cation–halide perovskites heals the defects that introduce deep trap states.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Aug 06, 2018
Source ID
10.1038/s41467-018-05531-8

Entities

People

  • Bin Sun
  • Danny Broberg
  • Eduard Fron
  • Edward H. Sargent
  • Fanglin Che
  • Furui Tan
  • Grant Walters
  • Haifeng Yuan
  • Hairen Tan
  • Junghwan Kim
  • Makhsud I Saidaminov
  • Mark Asta
  • Mingyang Wei
  • Oleksandr Voznyy
  • Petar Todorović
  • Taotao Zhuang
  • Yicheng Zhao
  • Zhenyu Yang
  • Zhiqin Liang

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Quantum spin resonance or Electron Paramagnetic Resonance spectroscopy.
  • Solar Photovoltaics and Thermoelectric Devices.