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An X-ray scattering and electron microscopy study of methylammonium bismuth perovskites for solar cell applications

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Abstract

Photovoltaics made from organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite semiconductors are attracting significant interest due to their ability to harvest sunlight with remarkable efficiency. The presence of lead in the best performing devices raises concerns regarding their toxicity, a problem that may create barriers to commercialization. Hybrid perovskites with reduced lead content are being investigated to overcome this issue and here we evaluate bismuth as a possible lead substitute. For a series of hybrid perovskite films with the general composition CH3NH3(PbyBi1− y)I3− xClx, we characterize their optical and structural properties using UV–Vis spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and grazing incidence wide angle X-ray scattering. We show that they form crystalline structures with an optical band gap, around 2 eV for CH3NH3BiI3. However, preliminary solar cell tests show low power conversion efficiencies (<0.01%) due to both incomplete precursor conversion and material de-wetting from the substrate. The overall outcome is severely limited photocurrent. With current processing methods the general applicability of hybrid bismuth perovskites in photovoltaics may be limited.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the EPSRC through research grants EP/M025020/1 “High resolution mapping of performance and degradation mechanisms in printable photovoltaic devices” and EP/J017361/1 “Supergen Supersolar Hub.” We thank Diamond Light Source for access to beamline I07 (SI11676-1) that contributed to the results presented here and we acknowledge Jonathan Rawle and Jonathan Griffin for their assistance during the GIWAXS experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 3JD, UK

    Chan Kyu Kwak & Alan D. F. Dunbar

  2. Department of Physics & Astronomy, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK

    Alex T. Barrows & David G. Lidzey

  3. Optoelectronics Group, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK

    Andrew J. Pearson

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  1. Chan Kyu Kwak
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Correspondence to Alan D. F. Dunbar.

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Kwak, C.K., Barrows, A.T., Pearson, A.J. et al. An X-ray scattering and electron microscopy study of methylammonium bismuth perovskites for solar cell applications. Journal of Materials Research 32, 1888–1898 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.499

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