Facile lattice tensile strain compensation in mixed-cation halide perovskite solar cells

Despite the rapid development of power conversion efficiency (PCE) for halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs), the lattice strain engineering in perovskite thin films has been rarely probed in recent years. Herein, a strain compensation by homogeneous crystallization in perovskite films is achieved with the aid of precursor aging in the mixed-cation perovskite of Cs0.05(FA0.83MA0.17)Pb(I0.90Br0.10)3 with near 20% PCE in inverted devices. The homogeneous crystallization releases the residual tensile stress and induces more compressive stress at the edges of perovskite films, thus elongating the carrier lifetime and reducing the trap-assisted carrier recombination. The high dependence on the perovskite components in strain engineering strategy was systematically revealed, wherein MAPbI3 and Cs0.05(FA0.83MA0.17)PbI3 film showed an increased compressive strain and FAPbI3 film showed adverse tensile strain after aging. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations are further performed to reveal the change of electronic features. The precursor aging-induced strain modulation was correlated with a systematic characterization of the charge carrier transport and recombination dynamics in the mixed-cation perovskite films. We believe that this facile approach provides a novel strain engineering strategy for PSCs technology.