Authors: M. Pazoki, A. Röckert, M. J. Wolf, R. Imani, T. Edvinsson, and J. Kullgren.
The emergence of highly efficient lead halide perovskite solar cell materials makes the exploration and engineering of new lead free compounds very interesting both from a fundamental perspective as well as for potential use as new materials in solar cell devices. Herein we present the electronic structure of several lanthanide (La) based materials in the metalorganic halide perovskite family not explored before. Our estimated bandgaps for the lanthanide (Eu, Dy, Tm, Yb) perovskite compounds are in the range of 2.0–3.2 eV showing the possibility for implementation as photo-absorbers in tandem solar cell configurations or charge separating materials. We have estimated the typical effective masses of the electrons and holes for MALaI3 (La= Eu, Dy, Tm, Yb) to be in the range of 0.3–0.5 and 0.97–4.0 units of the free electron mass, respectively. We have shown that the localized f-electrons within our DFT+U approach, make the dominant electronic contribution to the states at the top of the valence band and thus have a strong impact on the photo-physical properties of the lanthanide perovskites. Therefore, the main valence to conduction band electronic transition for MAEuI3 is based on inner shell f-electron localized states within a periodic framework of perovskite crystal by which the optical absorption onset would be rather inert with respect to quantum confinement effects. The very similar crystal structure and lattice constant of the lanthanide perovskites to the widely studied CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite, are prominent advantages for implementation of these compounds in tandem or charge selective contacts in PV applications together with lead iodide perovskite devices.
J. Mater. Chem. A, 5, 2017, pp. 23131-23138
DOI: 10.1039/C7TA07716E
Thin film structures of water on the CeO2(111) surface for coverages between 0.5 and 2.0 water monolayers have been optimized and analyzed using density functional theory (optPBE-vdW functional). We present a new 1.0 ML structure that is both the lowest in energy published and features a hydrogen-bond network extending the surface in one-dimension, contrary to what has been found in the literature, and contrary to what has been expected due to the large bulk ceria cell dimension. The adsorption energies for the monolayer and multilayered water structures agree well with experimental temperature programmed desorption results from the literature, and we discuss the stability window of CeO2(111) surfaces covered with 0.5–2.0 ML of water.