Preparation of Micron-sized Methylamine-PbCl3 perovskite grains by controlling phase transition engineering for selective Ultraviolet-harvesting transparent photovoltaics

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Feb;607(Pt 2):1083-1090. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.09.054. Epub 2021 Sep 13.

Abstract

Selective ultraviolet-harvesting transparent perovskite solar cells (T-PSCs) have attracted great interest because of their high transmittance and unique photovoltaic properties, especially in the fields of smart windows for power generation and building glass. However, owing to the unsatisfactory solubility of PbCl2 in most conventional solvents, preparing transparent methylammonium lead chloride (MAPbCl3) films with high quality and sufficient thickness by conventional methods poses a substantial challenge for their application deployment in T-PSCs. In this work, two novel strategies based on an ion-exchange procedure for controlling phase transition engineering (CPTE) are proposed. For CPTE-2, an optimized cubic phase MAPbCl3 film with a large grain size and high full coverage is prepared by transforming the tetragonal phase MAPbI3 precursor into the cubic phase MAPbCl3. Establishing relevant models based on crystal parameters investigates the formation mechanism of this high-quality MAPbCl3 film. Accordingly, the resultant T-PSCs exhibit remarkable film quality and micron-sized grains and reach an optimum efficiency of 0.33% (JSC = 0.66 mA cm-2, VOC = 1.14 V, and FF = 43.72%).

Keywords: Micron-sized grains; Phase transition; Transparent photovoltaics; cubic MAPbCl(3) perovskite; tetragonal MAPbI(3) perovskite.