Photoluminescent and photoconductive BaZrS3 films grown at device-compatible temperatures from stable sulfide precursors

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

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Original abstract

Chalcogenide perovskites (CPs) are attractive earth-abundant, non-toxic light absorbers. BaZrS3 is a prominent candidate in the CP family due to its 1.7-2.0 eV band gap, which aligns well with a top absorber in Si-based tandem solar cells. The main bottleneck in CP photovoltaics lies in the thin-film crystallization. So far, CP thin films have been crystallized either at device-incompatible temperatures above 900 °C or under high sulfur pressures at lower temperatures, which yields suboptimal optoelectronic properties due to S interstitial defects (Si). To overcome kinetic barriers at moderate temperatures without the need for excess sulfur, we use a stable, amorphous sulfide precursor film that readily crystallizes during post-annealing under S-poor conditions. We report a synthesis route at 600 °C that is robust towards oxygen contamination and still produces BaZrS3 thin films with some of the narrowest x-ray diffraction peaks reported so far, indicating high crystallinity. Importantly, the films exhibit photoconductivity, a bandgap-aligned photoluminescence peak, and intragrain carrier mobility of 70 cm2V-1s-1. Oxygen segregates into nano-voids at grain boundaries, preserving high-quality intra-grain transport pathways. Our results demonstrate that BaZrS3 can achieve promising optoelectronic quality at processing temperatures compatible with tandem solar cell integration, shifting the primary challenge towards grain-boundary passivation.

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