Experimental studies have demonstrated the importance
of the combination
of different chemical species at the A-, B-, or X-sites in metal-halide
ABX3 perovskites to improve the performance of perovskite
solar cells (PSCs). However, from our understanding, further efforts
at the atomistic scale are required to unveil the role of alloying
in PSCs. Here, we performed a density functional theory investigation
on perovskite alloy materials, namely, Cs
x
MA1–x
PbI3, MA
x
FA1–x
Sn0.50Pb0.50I3, and MA
x
FA1–x
PbBr2.50I0.50 (x = 0.00, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.00). Equilibrium
orthorhombic supercell structures were obtained for all systems with
distorted octahedral environments, in which the magnitude depends
on the chemical species. Besides, energetically stable crystals, in
comparison with the parent structures, were found only for Cs
x
MA1–x
PbI3, even though the remaining alloys presented stronger bonds.
Furthermore, we addressed the role of the spin–orbit coupling
effects to the electronic structure, which was critical to estimate
the power conversion efficiency (PCE) with radiative recombinations,
e.g., a PCE exceeding 23% was obtained. From our analyses, alloys
with Cs content stood out as the best photovoltaic material.
The oxidation of Sn(II) into the more stable Sn(IV) degrades the photovoltaic perovskite material CsSnI3; however, this problem could be counteracted by alkaline-earth (AE) doping. In this work, the electronic...
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