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Observation of a hot-phonon bottleneck in lead-iodide perovskites

Nature Photonics volume 10, pages 53–59 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

We study the carrier dynamics in planar methyl ammonium lead iodide perovskite films using broadband transient absorption spectroscopy. We show that the sharp optical absorption onset is due to an exciton transition that is inhomogeneously broadened with a binding energy of 9 meV. We fully characterize the transient absorption spectrum by free-carrier-induced bleaching of the exciton transition, quasi-Fermi energy, carrier temperature and bandgap renormalization constant. The photo-induced carrier temperature is extracted from the transient absorption spectra and monitored as a function of delay time for different excitation wavelengths and photon fluences. We find an efficient hot-phonon bottleneck that slows down cooling of hot carriers by three to four orders of magnitude in time above a critical injection carrier density of ∼5 × 1017 cm−3. Compared with molecular beam epitaxially grown GaAs, the critical density is an order of magnitude lower and the relaxation time is approximately three orders of magnitude longer.

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Figure 1: Spectral analysis.
Figure 2: Illustration of the model used to interpret the TA spectra.
Figure 3: Hot carrier thermalization.
Figure 4: Carrier cooling curves for methylammonium (MA) and formamidinium (FA) lead halide perovskite films.
Figure 5: Time constant characterizing carrier thermalization rate due to phonon emission as a function of carrier temperature.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank A.J. Nozik for discussions. This work was supported by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the US Department of Energy through the Solar Photochemistry programme contract no. DE-AC36-08GO28308 to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO. J.M.L. was supported by the US Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) programme. The authors thank S. Saha for preparing some of the perovskite films. The publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US Government retains a non-exclusive, paid up, irrevocable, worldwide licence to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for US Government purposes.

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  1. Chemistry and Nanoscience Science Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, 80401, Colorado, USA

    Ye Yang, David P. Ostrowski, Ryan M. France, Kai Zhu, Jao van de Lagemaat, Joseph M. Luther & Matthew C. Beard

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Contributions

Y.Y. and M.C.B. conceived the experiments. Y.Y. carried out the transient absorption measurements. D.P.O. and K.Z. prepared the perovskite samples. R.M.F. prepared the GaAs samples. J.M.L. performed XRD measurements. Y.Y. and M.C.B. analysed the data. Y.Y., M.C.B. and J.v.d.L. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors.

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Correspondence to Matthew C. Beard.

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Yang, Y., Ostrowski, D., France, R. et al. Observation of a hot-phonon bottleneck in lead-iodide perovskites. Nature Photon 10, 53–59 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.213

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