Halogen in Materials Design: Revealing the Nature of Hydrogen Bonding and Other Non-Covalent Interactions in the Polymorphic Transformations of Methylammonium Lead Tribromide Perovskite

TL;DR

This study uses computational methods to reveal that hydrogen bonding and other non-covalent interactions involving halogen atoms are crucial in the polymorphic transformations of methylammonium lead tribromide perovskite, affecting its structure and properties.

Contribution

It uncovers new non-covalent interactions, including hydrogen bonds and pnictogen bonding, that influence the polymorphic forms of CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite.

Findings

Hydrogen bonds involving H on C and N are present in all polymorphs.

Multiple non-covalent interactions collectively determine the orthorhombic structure.

Hydrogen bonding persists across different temperature-induced polymorphs.

Abstract

Methylammonium lead tribromide perovskite (CH3NH3PbBr3, or MAPbBr3) as a photovoltaic material has attracted a great deal of recent interest. Factors that are important in their application in optoelectronic devices include their fractional contribution of the composition of the materials as well as their microscopic arrangement that is responsible for the formation of well-defined macroscopic structures. CH3NH3PbBr3 assumes different polymorphs (orthorhombic, tetragonal and cubic) depending on the evolution temperature of the bulk material. Density functional theory calculations have been performed on polymorphs of CH3NH3PbBr3 to demonstrate that the H atoms on C of the methyl group in MA entrapped within a MAPbBr3 perovskite cage are not electronically innocent, as is often contended. We show here that these H atoms are involved in attractive interactions with the surrounding bromides of corner-sharing octahedra of the CH3NH3PbBr3 cage to form Br...H(-C) hydrogen bonding interactions. This is analogous to the way the H atoms on N of the ammonium group in MA form Br...H(-N) hydrogen bonding interactions to stabilize the structure of CH3NH3PbBr3. Both these hydrogen bonding interactions are shown to persist regardless of the nature of the three polymorphic forms of CH3NH3PbBr3. These, together with the Br...C(-N) carbon bonding, the Br...N(-C) pnictogen bonding, and the Br...Br lump-hole type intermolecular non-covalent interactions identified for the first time in this study, are shown to be collectively responsible for the eventual emergence of the orthorhombic geometry of the CH3NH3PbBr3 system. These conclusions are arrived at from a systematic analysis of the results obtained from combined DFT, Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules, and Reduced Density Gradient Non-Covalent Interaction calculations carried out on the three temperature-dependent polymorphic geometries of CH3NH3PbBr3.