Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used a novel method, based pressure from a diamond anvil cell, to stabilize lead halide perovskites and prevent them from breaking down at room temperature.
The team placed the regular version of the material, prone to instability, in a diamond anvil cell and squeezed it at a high temperature. This treatment reportedly "nudges" its atomic structure into an efficient configuration and keeps it that way, even at room temperature and in relatively moist air.
'Now that we've found this optimal way to prepare the material,' she said, 'there's potential for scaling it up for industrial production, and for using this same approach to manipulate other perovskite phases.'
In this work, the scientists studied a lead halide perovskite that's a combination of iodine, lead and cesium. One phase of this material, known as the yellow phase, does not have a true perovskite structure and can't be used in solar cells. However, scientists discovered a while back that if you process it in certain ways, it changes to a black perovskite phase that's extremely efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. 'This has made it highly sought after and the focus of a lot of research,' said Stanford Professor and study co-author Wendy Mao.
Unfortunately, these black phases are also structurally unstable and tend to quickly turn back into the useless configuration. In addition, they only operate with high efficiency at high temperatures, Mao said, and researchers will have to overcome both of those problems before they can be used in practical devices.
There had been previous attempts to stabilize the black phases with chemistry, strain or temperature, but only in a moisture-free environment that doesn't reflect the real-world conditions that solar cells operate in. This study combined both pressure and temperature in a more realistic working environment.
Working with colleagues in the Stanford research groups of Mao and Professor Hemamala Karunadasa, Lin and postdoctoral researcher Feng Ke designed a setup where yellow phase crystals were squeezed between the tips of diamonds in what's known as a diamond anvil cell. With the pressure still on, the crystals were heated to 450 degrees Celsius and then cooled down.
Under the right combination of pressure and temperature, the crystals turned from yellow to black and stayed in the black phase after the pressure was released, the scientists said. They were resistant to deterioration from moist air and remained stable and efficient at room temperature for 10 to 30 days or more.
Examination with X-rays and other techniques confirmed the shift in the material's crystal structure, and calculations by SIMES theorists Chunjing Jia and Thomas Devereaux provided insight into how the pressure changed the structure and preserved the black phase.
The pressure needed to turn the crystals black and keep them that way was roughly 1,000 to 6,000 times atmospheric pressure, Lin said Â' about a tenth of the pressures routinely used in the synthetic diamond industry. So one of the goals for further research will be to transfer what the researchers have learned from their diamond anvil cell experiments to industry and scale up the process to bring it within the realm of manufacturing.
