Structural, morphological and thermodynamic parameters investigation of tunable MAPb1-xCdxBr3-2xI2x hybrid perovskite

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites are a leading successor for the next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices, owing to their unique optical and electrical properties. There has been a concerted effort to understand how different elements can further allow us to tune these properties more favorably for different applications. Herein, we propose to tune these properties further via simultaneous cationanion co-doping in CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite using CdI2. We probed how the incorporation of carefully selected anionic and cationic dopants may synergically affect the perovskite properties, including the crystalline phase, thin-film morphology, optical and thermodynamic properties. We supplemented our studies with microscopy, namely SEM coupled with EDAX, to analyze the impact of double dopants on the grain size, pinhole morphology, and elemental composition of the hybrid perovskites. Spectroscopic measurements (UV-Vis-DRS and FTIR) were conducted on the hybrids to see how the interactions with Cd and I with the perovskite might additively modulate the energy band gap and functional group functionality. With the help of the simultaneous application of TGA and DSC, we were able to characterize the thermodynamic behavior (thermal stability and enthalpy change) of co-doped hybrids, which become especially important when operating at scale. This combined spectroscopic and thermodynamic study on the effects of co-doping will help to develop better algorithmic designs to choose multiple dopants which can synergically enhance desired optoelectronic properties at scale. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.