Quantification of light-enhanced ionic transport in lead iodide perovskite thin films and its solar cell applications

Ionic transport in organometal halide perovskites is of vital importance because it dominates anomalous phenomena in perovskite solar cells, from hysteresis to switchable photovoltaic effects. However, excited state ionic transport under illumination has remained elusive, although it is essential for understanding the unusual light-induced effects (light-induced self-poling, photo-induced halide segregation and slow photoconductivity response) in organometal halide perovskites for optoelectronic applications. Here, we quantitatively demonstrate light-enhanced ionic transport in CH_3NH_3PbI_3 over a wide temperature range of 17–295 K, which reveals a reduction in ionic transport activation energy by approximately a factor of five (from 0.82 to 0.15 eV) under illumination. The pure ionic conductance is obtained by separating it from the electronic contribution in cryogenic galvanostatic and voltage-current measurements. On the basis of these findings, we design a novel light-assisted method of catalyzing ionic interdiffusion between CH_3NH_3I and PbI_2 stacking layers in sequential deposition perovskite synthesis. X-ray diffraction patterns indicate a significant reduction of PbI_2 residue in the optimized CH_3NH_3PbI_3 thin film produced via lightassisted sequential deposition, and the resulting solar cell efficiency is increased by over 100% (7.5%–15.7%) with little PbI_2 residue. This new method enables fine control of the reaction depth in perovskite synthesis and, in turn, supports light-enhanced ionic transport.supported by the National 973 Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China,the National Natural Science Foundation of China,the Beijing Nova Program,the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of China中国科学引文数据库(CSCD)216243-1-16243-8