Dipolar cation accumulation at interfaces of perovskite light emitting solar cells

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that ionic migration in mixed halide perovskite devices can controllably alter the band structure via dipolar cation accumulation at interfaces, enabling lower threshold voltages and flexible device engineering.

Contribution

It reveals how dipolar cation migration causes band bending in perovskite LEDs, offering a new method to tune device properties without additional interface modifications.

Findings

Cation migration induces band bending at interfaces.

Lowered electroluminescence threshold voltages.

Enhanced device flexibility through in-situ band structure control.

Abstract

Ionic migration in organo-halide perovskites plays an important role in operation of perovskite based solar cells and light emitting diodes. Despite the ionic migration being a reversible process, it often leads to worsening of perovskite based device performance, hysteresis in current-voltage characteristics, and phase segregation in mixed halide perovskites being as the most harmful effect. The reason is in dynamical band structure changes, which controllable engineering would solve one of the biggest challenges for development of light-emitting solar cells. Here we demonstrate controllable band bending due to migration of both cation and anion ions in mixed halide perovskite devices. The band structure rearrangement is demonstrated in light emitting solar cells based on the perovskite with organic cations methylammonium (MA+) and formamidinium (FA+), possessing non-zero dipole momentum of 2.29 and 0.21 Debye, respectively, and with PEDOT:PSS and C60 transport layers having a high barrier of 0.8 eV for charge injection. Under applied external voltage MA+ and FA+ cations move towards the electron transport layer and form a dipole layer at the perovskite/electron transport interface, which lowers threshold voltage for electroluminescence down to 1.7 V for MAPbBr2I and 2.6 V for FAPbBr2I, whereas monohalide perovskite MAPbBr3 does not demonstrate such behavior. This ability to in-situ change the device band structure paves the way developing of dual-functional devices based on simple design. It also makes mixed halide perovskites more flexible than mono halides ones for developing different optoelectronic devices without the use of special types of work function modifying transport materials.