Reversing Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Perovskite Degradation in Water via pH and Hydrogen Bonds

The moisture instability of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells has been a major obstacle to the commercialization, calling for mechanistic understanding of the degradation process, which has been under debate. Here we present a surprising discovery that the degradation is actually reversible, via in situ observation of X-ray diffraction, supported by FTIR and SEM. To isolate the hydrogen bond effect, water was replaced by methanol during the in situ experiment, revealing the decomposition to be initiated by the breakdown of N-H-I hydrogen bonds. This is followed by the step of organic iodide hydrolyzing, which can be inhibited in the neutral environment, making the whole process reversible under variable pH.