Researchers from the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found that the environment is a non-trivial component in the operation of organometal halide perovskite (OMHP) devices, playing an important role in the charge transport behavior at the electrode/crystal interface of OMHPs due to coupling between surface mediated redox processes and bulk ionic species.
The team explored environmental and interface effects, namely transport behavior and origins of the gas sensitivity, in MAPbBr3 single crystal (SC) devices using impedance spectroscopy and G-Mode Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (G-KPFM). Strong resistive response was found to occur when the crystals were exposed to different environments. It was shown, among other things, that SC response to the environment is extremely different at the surface as compared to the bulk due to the disorder surface chemistry.
