Publication date: 15th November 2022
Solar cells based on thin film polycrystalline perovskite have reached efficiencies above 25%, yet their feasibility as a sustainable technology is hindered by problems such as stability. Monocrystal perovskites emerge as a new candidate to overcome the main problems of their polycrystalline counterparts due to their inherently low defect densities and grain boundary-free structure. These properties translate into materials with longer carrier diffusion length, time decay, and stability than their polycrystal counterpart. However, the outstanding properties of monocrystalline perovskites are not directly translated into better device properties due to difficulties controlling the form factor and the surface defect densities. In this study, we report a method to increase up to ten times the photoluminescence (PL) in methylammonium lead bromide (MAPbBr3) single crystals (SC) through suppression of non-radiative recombination. The contactless-passivation approach reported here could represent an alternate method for boosting the efficiency and stability of organic lead halide perovskites.