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Title: Predicting the thermodynamic stability of double-perovskite halides from density functional theory

Journal Article · · APL Materials
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5027414 · OSTI ID:1440832
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]
  1. East China Normal Univ., Shanghai (China)
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  3. East China Normal Univ., Shanghai (China); Shanxi Univ., Shanxi (China)

Recently, a series of double-perovskite halide compounds such as Cs2AgBiCl6 and Cs2AgBiBr6 have attracted intensive interest as promising alternatives to the solar absorber material CH3NH3PbI3 because they are Pb-free and may exhibit enhanced stability. The thermodynamic stability of a number of double-perovskite halides has been predicted based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations of compound formation energies. In this paper, we found that the stability prediction can be dependent on the approximations used for the exchange-correlation functionals, e.g., the DFT calculations using the widely used Perdew, Burke, Ernzerhof (PBE) functional predict that Cs2AgBiBr6 is thermodynamically unstable against phase-separation into the competing phases such as AgBr, Cs2AgBr3, Cs3Bi2Br9, etc., obviously inconsistent with the good stability observed experimentally. The incorrect prediction by the PBE calculation results from its failure to predict the correct ground-state structures of AgBr, AgCl, and CsCl. By contrast, the DFT calculations based on local density approximation, optB86b-vdW, and optB88-vdW functionals predict the ground-state structures of these binary halides correctly. Furthermore, the optB88-vdW functional is found to give the most accurate description of the lattice constants of the double-perovskite halides and their competing phases. Given these two aspects, we suggest that the optB88-vdW functional should be used for predicting thermodynamic stability in the future high-throughput computational material design or the construction of the Materials Genome database for new double-perovskite halides. As a result, using different exchange-correlation functionals has little influence on the dispersion of the conduction and the valence bands near the electronic bandgap; however, the calculated bandgap can be affected indirectly by the optimized lattice constant, which varies for different functionals.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1440832
Journal Information:
APL Materials, Vol. 6, Issue 8; ISSN 2166-532X
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 43 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (6)

Pressure‐Dependent Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Lead‐Free Halide Double Perovskite Cs 2 AgB″X 6 (B″═In, Bi; X═Cl, Br, I) journal September 2019
Progress of Lead‐Free Halide Double Perovskites journal January 2019
Machine Learning (ML)‐Assisted Design and Fabrication for Solar Cells journal September 2019
Lead-free double perovskites Cs 2 InCuCl 6 and (CH 3 NH 3 ) 2 InCuCl 6 : electronic, optical, and electrical properties journal January 2019
Two-dimensional lead-free iodide-based hybrid double perovskites: crystal growth, thin-film preparation and photocurrent responses journal January 2019
High-throughput screening of chalcogenide single perovskites by first-principles calculations for photovoltaics journal October 2018

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