Hole Trapping by Iodine Interstitial Defects Decreases Free Carrier Losses in Perovskite Solar Cells: A Time-Domain Ab Initio Study

We present a time-domain ab initio study of electron–hole recombination in pristine MAPbI3, and compare it to the trap mediated recombination in MAPbI3 with the iodine interstitial defect. Nonadiabatic molecular dynamics combined with time-domain density functional theory show that the iodine interstitial defect creates a subgap state capable of trapping both electrons and holes. Hole trapping occurs much faster than electron trapping or electron–hole recombination. The trapped hole survives for hundreds of nanoseconds, because, rather surprisingly, recombination of electrons with the trapped hole takes several times longer than recombination of electrons with holes in the valence band. Because the hole trap is relatively shallow, the hole can escape into the valence band prior to recombining with the electron. The differences are rationalized by variation in nonadiabatic electron–phonon couplings, phonon-induced pure-dephasing times and electronic energy gaps. The time-domain atomistic simulations contribute to understanding of the experimentally known defect-tolerance of perovskite solar cells, which is of great importance to the solar cell performance.