Structural Origins of Light-Induced Phase Segregation in Organic-Inorganic Halide Perovskite Photovoltaic Materials

Abstract

<h2>Summary</h2> Organic-inorganic metal-halide perovskite materials offer a promising route to reducing the dollars-per-watt cost of solar energy due to their good optoelectronic properties and facile, scalable processing. Compositional tuning allows for the preparation of absorbers with band gaps tailor-made for specific tandem and single-junction applications, but photoinduced phase segregation in mixed-halide materials leads to the formation of low-band-gap regions that reduce the voltage of devices. This work explores the structural origins of photoinduced phase segregation in FA_yCs_1−yPb(Br_xI_1−x)₃ perovskite alloys. We use synchrotron X-ray diffraction to map the solvus between the cubic and cubic-tetragonal mixed-phase region and time-dependent photoluminescence to assess stability under illumination. We show that the correlation between crystallographic phase and phase-segregation behavior is imperfect, so phase is not the sole determinant of optical stability. Instead, we consider several possible mechanisms that could underlie the dependence of optical stability on perovskite composition.