Grain Boundary Healing of Organic-Inorganic Halide Perovskites for Moisture Stability

Nano Lett. 2019 Sep 11;19(9):6498-6505. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02721. Epub 2019 Aug 20.

Abstract

Although organic-inorganic halide perovskite (OIHP)-based photovoltaics have high photoconversion efficiency (PCE), their poor humidity stability prevents commercialization. To overcome this critical hurdle, focusing on the grain boundary (GB) of OIHPs, which is the main humidity penetration channel, is crucial. Herein, pressure-induced crystallization of OIHP films prepared with controlled mold geometries is demonstrated as a GB-healing technique to obtain high moisture stability. When exposed to 85% RH at 30 °C, OIHP films fabricated by pressure-induced crystallization have enhanced moisture stability due to the enlarged OIHP grain size and low-angle GBs. The crystallographic and optical properties indicate the effect of applying pressure onto OIHP films in terms of moisture stability. The photovoltaic devices with pressure-induced crystallization exhibited dramatically stabilized performance and sustained over 0.95 normalized PCE after 200 h at 40% RH and 30 °C.

Keywords: grain boundary healing; halide perovskites; moisture stability; pressure-induced crystallization.