Proceedings of 13th Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV21)
Publication date: 11th May 2021
Tin halide perovskites are currently the most promising alternative to address the toxicity of lead halide perovskite photovoltaics, although their poor ambient stability remains as the main impediment for this lead-free technology to attain competitive efficiencies. Hence, a detailed understanding of their degradation pathways is required to tackle their stability issues. In this talk, we present the degradation mechanism of tin perovskite thin films based on (PEA)0.2(FA)0.8SnI3 (where PEA is phenylethylammonium and FA is formamidinium). We show that SnI4, a product of the oxygen-mediated tin perovskite decomposition, promptly evolves to give iodine via the combined effect of atmospheric water and oxygen. Iodine is then found to be a highly aggressive species that leads to further perovskite degradation to produce more SnI4, giving rise to a cyclic degradation mechanism. We find the ambient stability of perovskite films to be strongly influenced by the hole transport layer chosen as the substrate, which is used to mitigate the oxidative decomposition of the material. We anticipate the key findings described here to inspire effective design rules towards stable lead-free, tin perovskite solar cells.