Surface passivation engineering strategy to fully-inorganic cubic CsPbI3 perovskites for high-performance solar cells

Owing to inevitable thermal/moisture instability for organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites, pure inorganic perovskite cesium lead halides with both inherent stability and prominent photovoltaic performance have become research hotspots as a promising candidate for commercial perovskite solar cells. However, it is still a serious challenge to synthesize desired cubic cesium lead iodides (CsPbI3) with superior photovoltaic performance for its thermodynamically metastable characteristics. Herein, polymer poly-vinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-induced surface passivation engineering is reported to synthesize extra-long-term stable cubic CsPbI3. It is revealed that acylamino groups of PVP induce electron cloud density enhancement on the surface of CsPbI3, thus lowering surface energy, conducive to stabilize cubic CsPbI3 even in micrometer scale. The cubic-CsPbI3 PSCs exhibit extra-long carrier diffusion length (over 1.5 mu m), highest power conversion efficiency of 10.74% and excellent thermal/moisture stability. This result provides important progress towards understanding of phase stability in realization of large-scale preparations of efficient and stable inorganic PSCs.