Influence of thermal processing protocol upon the crystallization and photovoltaic performance of organic–inorganic lead trihalide perovskites

We investigate the thermally induced morphological and crystalline development of methylammonium lead mixed halide perovskite (CH3NH3PbI3–xClx) thin films and photovoltaic device performance with meso-superstructured and planar heterojunction architectures. We observe that a short rapid thermal annealing at 130 °C leads to the growth of large micron-sized textured perovskite domains and improved the short circuit currents and power conversion efficiencies up to 13.5% for the planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells. This work highlights the criticality of controlling the thin film crystallization mechanism of hybrid perovskite materials for high-performing photovoltaic applications