Solution-Processed Air-Stable Copper Bismuth Iodide for Photovoltaics

Bismuth-based solar cells have been under intensive interest as an efficient non-toxic absorber in photovoltaics. Within this new family of semiconductors, we herein report a new, long-term stable copper bismuth iodide (CuBiI4). A solutionprocessed method under air atmosphere is used to prepare the material. The adopted HI-assisted dimethylacetamide (DMA) co-solvent can completely dissolve CuI and BiI3 powders with high concentration compared with other organic solvents. Moreover, the high vapor pressure of tributyl phosphate, selected for the solvent vapor annealing (SVA), enables complete low-temperature (<70 degrees C) film preparation, resulting in a stable, uniform, dense CuBiI4 film. The average grain size increases with the precursor concentration, greatly improving the photoluminescence lifetime and hall mobility; a carrier life-time of 3.03 ns as well as an appreciable hall mobility of 110 cm(2)V(-1)s(-1) were obtained. XRD illustrates that the crystal structure is cubic (space group Fd3m) and favored in the [111] direction. Moreover, the photovoltaic performance of CuBiI4 was also investigated. A wide bandgap (2.67 eV) solar cell with 0.82% power conversion efficiency is presented, which exhibits excellent long-term stability over 1008 h under ambient conditions. This air-stable material may give an application in future tandem solar cells as a stable short-wavelength light absorber.