AgBiI4 as a Lead-Free Solar Absorber with Potential Application in Photovoltaics

作者：Sansom Harry C; Whitehead George F S; Dyer Matthew S; Zanella Marco; Manning Troy D; Pitcher Michael J; Whittles Thomas J; Dhanak Vinod R; Alaria Jonathan; Claridge John B^*; Rosseinsky Matthew J^*

来源：Chemistry of Materials, 2017, 29(4): 1538-1549.

DOI：10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b04135

AgBiI4 powder, crystals, and polycrystalline films were synthesized by sealed tube solid state reactions, chemical vapor transport (CVT), and solution processing, respectively, and their structural, optical and electronic properties are reported. The structure of AgBiI4 is based unambiguously upon a cubic close packed iodide sublattice, but it presents an unusual crystallographic problem: we show that the reported structure, a cubic defect-spinel, cannot be distinguished from a metrically cubic layered structure analogous to CdCl2 using either powder or single crystal X-ray crystallography. In addition, we demonstrate the existence a noncubic CdCl2-type polymorph by isolation of nontwinned single crystals. The indirect optical band gap of AgBiI4 is measured to be 1.63(1) eV, comparable to the indirect band gap of 1.69(1) eV measured for BiI3 and smaller than that reported for other bismuth halides, suggesting that structures with a close-packed iodide sublattice may give narrower band gaps than those with perovskite structures. Band edge states closely resemble those of BiI3; however, the p-type nature of AgBiI4 with low carrier concentration is more similar to MAPbI(3) than the n-type BiI3. AgBiI4 shows good stability toward the AM1.5 solar spectrum when kept in a sealed environment and is thermally stable below 90 degrees C.

• 出版日期2017-2-28