Stabilizing Metal Halide Perovskites for Solar Fuel Production: Challenges, Solutions, and Future Prospects

Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) are emerging photocatalyst materials that can enable sustainable solar-to-chemical energy conversion by virtue of their broad absorption spectra, effective separation/transport of photogenerated carriers, and solution processability. Although preliminary studies show the excellent photocatalytic activities of MHPs, their intrinsic structural instability due to the low formation energy and soft ionic nature is an open challenge for their practical applications. This review discusses the latest understanding of the stability issue and strategies to overcome this issue for MHP-based photocatalysis. First, the origin of the instability issue at atomic levels and the design rules for robust structures are analyzed and elucidated. This is then followed by presenting several different material design strategies for stability enhancement, including reaction medium modification, material surface protection, structural dimensionality engineering, and chemical composition engineering. Emphases are placed on understanding the effects of these strategies on photocatalytic stability as well as the possible structure-performance correlation. Finally, the possible future research directions for pursuing stable and efficient MHP photocatalysts in order to accelerate their technological maturity on a practical scale are outlined. With that, it is hoped to provide readers a valuable snapshot of this rapidly developing and exciting field.