# Calculating polaron mobility in halide perovskites

## TL;DR

This paper presents a first-principles method to predict polaron mobility in halide perovskites, accounting for strong electron-phonon interactions, and validates it against experimental data.

## Contribution

It introduces a variational Feynman polaron model parametrized from electronic structure calculations to predict temperature-dependent mobility in halide perovskites.

## Key findings

- Predicted electron mobility of 133 cm^2/V/s at 300 K
- Predicted hole mobility of 94 cm^2/V/s at 300 K
- Model aligns with experimental measurements

## Abstract

Lead halide perovskite semiconductors are soft, polar, materials. The strong driving force for polaron formation (the dielectric electron-phonon coupling) is balanced by the light band effective-masses, leading to a strongly-interacting large-polaron. A first-principles prediction of mobility would help understand the fundamental mobility limits. Theories of mobility need to consider the polaron (rather than free-carrier) state due to the strong interactions. In this material we expect that at room temperature polar-optical phonon mode scattering will dominate, and so limit mobility. We calculate the temperature-dependent polaron mobility of hybrid halide perovskites by variationally solving the Feynman polaron model with the finite-temperature free-energies of \=Osaka. This model considers a simplified effective-mass band-structure interacting with a continuum dielectric of characteristic response frequency. We parametrise the model fully from electronic-structure calculations. In methylammonium lead iodide at 300 K we predict electron and hole mobilities of 133 and 94 cm^2/V/s respectively. These are in acceptable agreement with single-crystal measurements, suggesting that the intrinsic limit of the polaron charge carrier state has been reached. Repercussions for hot-electron photo-excited states are discussed. As well as mobility, the model also exposes the dynamic structure of the polaron. This can be used to interpret impedance measurements of the charge-carrier state. We provide the phonon-drag mass-renormalisation, and scattering time constants. These could be used as parameters for larger-scale device models and band-structure dependent mobility simulations.