Determination of the True Lateral Grain Size in Organic-Inorganic Halide Perovskite Thin Films

Published

October 4, 2017

Author(s)

Gordon A. MacDonald, Chelsea Heveran, Mengjin Yang, David Moore, Kai Zhu, Virginia L. Ferguson, Jason Killgore, Frank W. DelRio

Abstract

In this letter, methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3) thin films were examined via piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) and nanoindentation (NI) to determine if long range atomic order existed across the full width of the apparent grains. From the PFM, the piezoelectric response of the films was strongly correlated with low-index planes of the crystal structure and ferroelectric domains in macro-scale solution-grown MAPbI3 crystals, which implied long-range order near the top surface. From the NI, it was found that the induced cracks were straight and extended across the full width of the apparent grains, which indicated that the long-range order was not limited to the near-surface region, but extended through the film thickness. Interestingly, the two MAPbI3 processes examined here resulted in subtle differences in the extracted electro-mechanical and fracture properties, but exhibited similar power conversion efficiencies of > 17 % in completed devices.

Citation

ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces

Volume

9

Issue

39

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.7b11434

Local Download

Keywords

Perovskite, photovoltaic, piezoresponse force microscopy, nanoindentation

Citation

MacDonald, G. , Heveran, C. , Yang, M. , Moore, D. , Zhu, K. , Ferguson, V. , Killgore, J. and DelRio, F. (2017), Determination of the True Lateral Grain Size in Organic-Inorganic Halide Perovskite Thin Films, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.7b11434, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923622 (Accessed October 12, 2025)