Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2024.150
Publication date: 18th December 2023
In the field of perovskite solar cells, explorations of new lead-free all-inorganic perovskite materials are of great interest to address the instability and toxicity issues of lead-based hybrid perovskites. Recently, copper-antimony-based double perovskite materials have been reported with ideal band gaps, which possess great potential as absorbers for photovoltaic applications.1-2 Here, we synthesize Cs2CuSbCl6 double perovskite nanocrystals (DPNCs) at ambient conditions by a facile and fast synthesis method, namely, a modified ligand-assisted reprecipitation (LARP) method. We choose methanol as solvent for precursor salts as it is less toxic and easily removed in contrast to widely-used dimethylformamide. Our computational structure search shows that the Cs2CuSbCl6 structure containing alternating [CuCl6]5- and [SbCl6]3- octahedral units is a metastable phase that is 30 meV/atom higher in energy compared to the ground state structure with [CuCl3]2- and [SbCl6]3- polyhedra. However, this metastable Cs2CuSbCl6 double perovskite structure can be stabilized through the solution-based nanocrystal synthesis. Using an anion-exchange method, Cs2CuSbBr6 DPNCs are obtained for the first time, featuring a narrow band gap of 0.9 eV. Finally, taking advantage of the solution processability of DPNCs, smooth and dense Cs2CuSbCl6 and Cs2CuSbBr6 DPNC films are successfully fabricated.