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Journal of the American Chemical Society
We hypothesize that the Bismuth is uniformly distributed
and the thickness of the crystals13. Previous reports on Bi3+ doping
of OIHP have underestimated this effect, and have thus reported
band gap reductions that we can’t reproduce when using appropriꢀ
ate measurement techniques such as ellipsometry. We note that
such erroneous band gap shifts have been also reported for unꢀ
doped perovskite single crystals or thick polycrystalline samples
in several studies published in leading journals (see SI). The oriꢀ
gins of such (apparent) band gap shifts (reported to be an unꢀ
solved problem26,27) can be explained considering the band edge
throughout the crystal, but its presence, either in the final crystals
or simply during the crystallization process, is primarily
disrupting the crystalline order and increasing the electronic
disorder, rather than resulting in a systematic shift in the crystal
structure. The reduced crystalline order may be detectable in the
form of nonꢀuniform strain (microstrain) in the MAPbBr3 crystals,
induced by crystal imperfections/structural defects including
dislocations, vacancies, stacking faults, etc.23. We quantify the
extent of microstrain in our perovskite crystals by analyzing the
peak broadening in the diffraction patterns according to the
modified WilliamsonꢀHall method (see SI) .23,24 Consistently, we
determine the microstrain in the crystals to increase upon doping
(Figure 3b and Figure S10). Furthermore, we observe gradual
broadening in the rocking curves (ω scans) of crystals with
increasing doping (Figure S11) which indicates distortions in the
crystal planes across the crystals.
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tail absorption in thick samples while the band gap value reꢀ
mains constant.
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From our experimental work, we are now able to provide a more
detailed picture of the doping of MAPbBr3 single crystals by bisꢀ
muth. The absence of band gap reduction, combined with an inꢀ
creased energetic disorder points towards the introduction of deꢀ
fects in the perovskite by the presence of Bi3+ ions in the growth
solution. In addition, the strong quenching of the photoluminesꢀ
cence and decrease in EQE of indicates that the electronic states
introduced by the dopants are detrimental to the optoelectronic
quality of the material.
In order to obtain information about the uniformity of the chemiꢀ
cal environment around the Pb2+ center and the protons of meꢀ
thylammonium, we performed solidꢀstate 207Pb NMR and 1H
NMR of the crystals. In Figure 4a, we show the 207Pb NMR specꢀ
tra of the undoped and doped crystals. We observe that the NMR
spectrum is broadened for the doped crystal, implying a variable
environment around the Pb and MA ions. For the 207Pb centers,
the broadening is probably due to the increased disorder in the
crystal as the chemical shift of nuclei is sensitive to the local
structural distortions25. We also see a similar broadening of the 1H
NMR spectrum (Figure S12)
In conclusion, we have shown that bandgap narrowing does not
occur in the MAPbBr3 crystals following the incorporation of Bi3+
in the growth solution. The apparent effect of the colour change,
is due to the increased number of defect states and a significant
increase in the subꢀband gap density of states. The Biꢀdoped crysꢀ
tals have higher levels of microstrain, increased electronic disorꢀ
der and reduced carrier lifetime and PL efficiency, due to inꢀ
creased nonꢀradiative recombination. Our study highlights the
challenges with heterovalent doping, particularly with Bi, of
OIHP semiconductors. More studies with different dopants will
gauge the usefulness of such an approach in order to control the
structural and electronic properties of OIHP.
MAPbBr
(a)5
3
4
(b)
MAPbBr -10% Bi
106
3
3
105
MAPbBr
3
2
MAPbBr -5% Bi
3
104
103
1
0
1000
950
900
850
800
750
700
2.0
2.2
2.4
2.6
2.8
Photon energy [eV]
We finally note that a recent publication identified bisꢀ
muth doping of CsPbI3 as a feasible route to increase the structural
stability, induce a 174 meV lowering of the absorption edge, and
increase the PL efficiency and photovoltaic solar energy converꢀ
sion efficiency28. This recent publication is inconsistent with our
findings here, and indicates that further work is still required to
understand the impact of heterovalent doping upon OIHP.
Chemical shift [ppm]
Figure 4. (a) 207Pb NMR spectrum of the undoped and Biꢀdoped
MAPbBr3 crystals. (b) Steadyꢀstate PL spectrum of MAPbBr3 and
Biꢀdoped MAPbBr3.
After establishing the impact of bismuth doping on the energetic
disorder and microstrains, we looked for the impact on the photoꢀ
luminescence (PL) properties of the materials. In Figure 4b we
show the PL spectrum of the crystals and the timeꢀresolved PL
decays in Figure S13. We find that the PL intensity is quenched
by >99 % in the doped crystals. We also observe a lowering of the
average PL decay lifetime in the presence of Bi3+ doping, via
timeꢀresolved photoluminescence (TRPL) decay measurements.
All our findings are consistent with the presence of bismuth introꢀ
ducing defect states in the crystal, which facilitating unfavorable
nonꢀradiative recombination, thereby lowering the PL intensity
and PL lifetime.
Supporting Information
AUTHOR INFORMATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by the EPSRC UK. MS and RL
acknowledge the InterPhase project from BMBF (FKZ
13N13656, 13N13657). BW acknowledges Marie Skłodowskaꢀ
Curie actions (706552ꢀAPPEL). We thank Sebastian Beck and
Nobuya Sakai for their assistance in UVꢀvis absorption measureꢀ
ments.
To understand the effect of doping on the charge transport, we
prepared solar cells with the following configuration
FTO/SnO2/MAPbBr3 (Biꢀdoped)/SpiroꢀOmeTAD/Ag. We measꢀ
ured the EQE of the devices and present the data in the Figure
S14. We find EQE drops with increased concentration of Bi in the
MAPbBr3 films. This finding indicates that the introduction Bi
introduces traps in the thinfilm which in turn reduces the carrier
collection efficiency. In addition, we do not see any shift in the
onset of the EQE spectrum which reaffirms our conclusion that
the introduction of Bi does not change the bandgap of the material
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(4)
The estimation of the bandgap from light transmission measureꢀ
ments can be difficult due to the strong absorption coefficients
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