In this article, we provide the evidence of domain wall (DW) conduction in 90° BaZr0.1Ti0.9O3 (BZT) DWs by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Experimental characterizations prove the existence of ferroelectric domains and DWs in as-prepared BZT films, and the measured electrical conductivity of the BZT films reaches ∼2.53 × 10−4 S/cm, which further confirms DW conduction. Furthermore, we designed BZT-based polarization tunable photovoltaic devices with DW conduction. The rearrangement of interfacial type-II band alignment upon different poling tends to regulate the charge transfer across the interface, confirmed by DFT calculations, resulting in a ferroelectric-tunable photovoltaic property. A positive polarization tends to improve the photovoltaic performance of the device, which has also been well verified in the experiments. Zr ion-implanted BaTiO3 provides a new route to fabricate an electronic transfer layer for high-efficiency perovskite solar cells. Our results reveal the mechanism of DW conduction, inspiring future improvements of photovoltaic devices which can be tuned by ferroelectric polarization.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.