Defect Engineering to Achieve Photostable Wide Bandgap Metal Halide Perovskites

Bandgap tuning is a crucial characteristic of metal-halide perovskites, with benchmark lead-iodide compounds having a bandgap of 1.6 eV. To increase the bandgap up to 2.0 eV, a straightforward strategy is to partially substitute iodide with bromide in so-called mixed-halide lead perovskites. Such compounds are prone, however, to light-induced halide segregation resulting in bandgap instability, which limits their application in tandem solar cells and a variety of optoelectronic devices. Crystallinity improvement and surface passivation strategies can effectively slow down, but not completely stop, such light-induced instability. Here we identify the defects and the intragap electronic states that trigger the material transformation and bandgap shift. Based on such knowledge, we engineer the perovskite band edge energetics by replacing lead with tin and radically deactivate the photoactivity of such defects. This leads to metal halide perovskites with a photostable bandgap over a wide spectral range and associated solar cells with photostable open circuit voltages.