Understanding the effects of annealing temperature on the mechanical properties of layers in FAI-rich perovskite solar cells

This paper uses a combination of experiments and theory to study the effects of annealing temperature on the mechanical properties of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs). We examined the mechanical (hardness and Young's modulus), microstructural, and surface topography properties of the HOIP film at different annealing temperatures ranging from 80 to 170 degrees C. A mechanism-based strain gradient (MSG) theory is used to explain indentation size effects in films at different annealing temperatures. Intrinsic film yield strengths and hardness values (deduced from the MSG theory) are then shown to exhibit a Hall-Petch dependence on the inverse square root of the average grain size. The implications of the results are then discussed for the design of mechanically robust perovskite solar cells. (c) 2022 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper uses a combination of experiments and theory to study the effects of annealing temperature on the mechanical properties of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. It proposes a mechanism-based strain gradient theory to explain the influence of annealing temperature on the mechanical properties of the film.