Abstract

Metal halide perovskites have emerged as a new class of semiconductor materials enabling a broad range of energy-related applications including photovoltaics, light-emission and solar energy storage devices. Since the first embodiment of perovskite solar cells showing a power conversion efficiency of 3.8%, the device performance has now been boosted up to a certified 22.1% within a few years. Obtaining high-quality perovskite thin films is the key step toward high performance photovoltaic and optoelectronic devices. The quality of the thin films is higly dependenent on the perovskite precursors and fabrication methods. Among various fabrication techinques, solution processing is still the most favorable as it relies on inexpensive deposition equipment and enables tuning the crystallization and compostion of the perovskite thin film. In this talk, we briefly introduce the fabrication of ultrasmooth, highly crystalline and pinhole free perovskite thin films through lead acetate based precursors, analyse the perovskite crystallization kinetics and thin film formation as compared to other non-halide precursor routes, explore their energy related applications, and finally discuss current challenges of this method and possible solutions, with the aim of stimulating potential new fabrication techniques and applications.