Bismuth Iodide Perovskite Materials for Solar Cell Applications: Electronic Structure, Optical Transitions, and Directional Charge Transport

Abstract

Cesium and methylammonium bismuth iodides (Cs3Bi2I9 and MA3Bi2I9) are new low-toxic and air stable compounds in the perovskite solar cell family with promising characteristics. Here, the electronic structure and the nature of their optical transitions, dielectric constant, and charge carrier properties are assessed for photovoltaic applications with density functional theory (DFT) calculations and experiments. The calculated direct and indirect band gap values for Cs3Bi2I9 (2.17 and 2.0 eV) and MA3Bi2I9 (2.17 and 1.97 eV) are found to be in good agreement with the experimental optical band gaps (2.2, 2.0 eV and 2.4, 2.1 eV for Cs3Bi2I9 and MA3Bi2I9, respectively) estimated for solution-processed films. There is an error cancelation in the DFT calculated band gap similar to that for lead perovskites. However, fully relativistic DFT calculations indicate that the size of the spin orbit coupling (SOC) error cancelation for bismuth perovskite (0.5 eV) is less than for lead perovskite (1 eV), and other factors...