Germanium halide perovskites are an attractive alternative to lead perovskites because of their well-suited optical properties for photovoltaic applications. However, the power conversion efficiencies of solar cells based on germanium perovskites remained below 0.2% so far, and also, the device stability is an issue. Herein, we show that modifying the chemical composition of the germanium perovskite, i.e., introducing bromide ions into the methylammonium germanium iodide perovskite, leads to a significant improvement of the solar cell performance along with a slight enhancement of the stability of the germanium perovskite. With substitution of 10% of the iodide with bromide, power conversion efficiencies up to 0.57% were obtained in MAGeI2.7Br0.3 based solar cells with a planar p–i–n architecture using PEDOT:PSS as hole and PC70BM as electron transport layer.

Solar cells based on the novel triple cation tin perovskite MA0.75FA0.15PEA0.1SnI3 exhibit PCEs of 5.0% and notably good stability over more than 5000 hours.