Roles of spin-orbit coupling in tetragonal hybrid halide perovskite for photovoltaics light-absorber

Hybrid halide perovskite has been gain appropriate attraction because of their relatively high efficiency in most recently solid-state solar cell development. In this work, A first-principle calculation based on non-local van der Waals-corrected Density Functional Theory (vdW-DFT) is performed to investigate high accuracy atomic structures of a tetragonal structure methyl ammonium (CH3NH3) metal (Pb, Sn) halide (Br-3, Cl-3, I-3). The calculated electronic structures were systematically studied using semi-local exchange-correlation functional (GGA-PBE), non-local functional (hybrid HSE06) and post-DFT approximation (GW). A relativistic effect in metal ion was taken into account by incorporating spin-orbit coupling (SOC) effect to obtain more accurate band gap properties of these materials. Our results shown that SOC corrected the electronic structures about 0.92 eV and 0.19 eV in case of lead ion and tin ion, respectively. The combination between GW approximation and spin-orbit coupling show a good agreement between DFT calculations and experimental studies. This computational scheme is necessary for high accuracy organic-inorganic solar cell design. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.