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Defects in halide perovskites: The lattice as a boojum?

  • Halide Perovskite Opto- and Nanoelectronic Materials and Devices
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Abstract

Although halide perovskites (HaPs) are synthesized in ways that appear antithetical to those required for yielding high-quality semiconductors, the properties of the resulting materials imply, particularly for single crystals, ultralow densities of optoelectronically active defects. This article provides different views of this unusual behavior. We pose the question: Can present models of point defects in solids be used to interpret the experimental data and provide predictive power? The question arises because the measured ultralow densities refer to static defects using our present methods and models, while dynamic defect densities are ultrahigh, a result of the material being relatively soft, with a shallow electrostatic energy landscape, and with anharmonic lattice dynamics. All of these factors make the effects of dynamic defects on the materials’ optoelectronic properties minimal. We hope this article will stimulate discussions on the nontrivial question: Are HaPs, and especially the defects within them, business as usual?

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Acknowledgments

S.K. thanks the Israel Council of Higher Learning for a Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC) Fellowship in support of his postdoctoral research. S.K. and D.C. thank the Israel Science Foundation, via its program with the PRC’s National Science Foundation, (ISF-NSFC) for partial support (@Bar-Ilan University). At the Weizmann Institute of Science, this work received support from the Yotam Project, via the Sustainability and Energy Research Initiative, and the Minerva Center for Self-Repairing Systems for Energy and Sustainability. We thank Y. Rakita for discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

    Sujit Kumar

  2. Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

    Gary Hodes

  3. Weizmann Institute of Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

    David Cahen

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  1. Sujit Kumar
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Additional information

A boojum is one type of Lewis Carroll’s imaginary snark that can cause “soft and sudden vanishing away” (Figure 3).55 N. David Mermin introduced the concept into the natural sciences (see Reference 54).

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Kumar, S., Hodes, G. & Cahen, D. Defects in halide perovskites: The lattice as a boojum?. MRS Bulletin 45, 478–484 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2020.146

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2020.146

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