The dominant role of seed templates in driving controlled growth of perovskite crystals

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  Highlights of the paper

  
  

  1. Based on the in-depth theoretical mechanism of heteroepitaxial growth and advanced in-situ template growth control strategies, a new idea is provided.

  
  

  2. Provided conceptual insights into the regulation of crystallization kinetics, crystal orientation arrangement, dimension construction and defect suppression of perovskite polycrystals.

  
  

  3. Prospective progress in controlling perovskite single crystal growth and its potential commercial applications is introduced.

  
  

  In recent decades, hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite materials have emerged as a revolution in next-generation photovoltaics. As a semiconductor material with great development prospects, it has excellent optoelectronic properties such as high absorption coefficient, long exciton diffusion distance, high carrier mobility, and low exciton binding energy, and has quickly become a research hotspot in the energy research community. With tremendous efforts in chemical composition engineering, thin film morphology modulation, interface/device modification, etc., the PCE of perovskite solar cells (PSCs ) has rapidly soared to the certified value of 26.1% in just ten years. However, due to the presence of unfavorable crystal Defect As a Shockley-Read-Hall composite loss center, PCE still lags behind the Shockley-Queisser theoretical limit (SQ limit). Random nucleation and chaotic diffusion growth during spontaneous solution chemical reactions lead to unsatisfactory film quality with disordered microstructure arrangement and serious defects. Therefore, in this context, effective regulation of crystallization kinetics has become one of the main factors for optimizing perovskite quality.

  
  

  Junjie Ma’s team at Zhengzhou University and Yanlin Song’s team at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences outlined the latest progress in perovskite seed-induced PSCs growth methods. In this review, we first explain the formation mechanism of perovskite films, including the nucleation and growth mechanisms of perovskite films with or without seeds, as well as the differences between single crystals and polycrystals. Secondly, we briefly review the existing methods for optimizing perovskite polycrystalline films, and systematically reveal the key role of seed templates in driving the controllable growth of perovskites, including crystallization regulation, orientation arrangement, dimensional structure construction, and defect suppression. . Furthermore, insights into substantial advances in single crystal growth systems are provided, followed by a discussion of their application prospects in electronic and optoelectronic devices, including solar cells, LEDs, etc. Finally, the development of innovative technologies in seeds and the commercial development prospects of perovskites are prospected.

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• Cai, M. et al. The dominant roles of the seed template in driving controllable growth of perovskite crystal. Nano Today, 54,102133 (2024).

  
  

  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nantod.2023.102133