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 °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 lifetime of 3.03 ns as well as an appreciable hall mobility of 110 cm² V⁻¹s⁻¹ were obtained. XRD illustrates that the crystal structure is cubic (space group Fd3m) and favored in the [1 1 1] 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.