Effects of different chloride precursors on crystal growth of lead halide perovskites

Abstract

The optimized quantity and nature of a chloride precursor used for the formation of large perovskite crystals with minimal disorder were explored. The effect of the alkyl chain length of an alkyl ammonium chloride precursor on the crystal growth of CH3NH3PbI3 was systematically investigated. It was found that the addition of ethyl ammonium chloride (EACl) increased the crystal size, which is almost twice (88 nm) the size of standard perovskite crystals (47 nm) having a preferential orientation towards the (110) plane. Photoacoustic studies demonstrated that the disorder in the perovskite crystals was highly reduced by the addition of the EACl precursor.