Optical Spintronics in Organic-Inorganic Perovskites Photovoltaics

Published

April 25, 2016

Author(s)

Junwen Li, Paul M. Haney

Abstract

Organic-inorganic halide CH₃NH₃PbI₃ solar cells have attracted enormous attention in recent years due to their remarkable power conversion efficiency. These materials should exhibit interesting spin-dependent properties as well, owing to the strong spin-orbit coupling and broken inversion symmetry. In this work, we consider the spin-dependent optical response of CH₃NH₃PbI₃. We first use density functional theory to compute the ballistic spin current generated by absorption of unpolarized light. We then consider diffusive transport of photogenerated charge and spin for a thin CH₃NH₃PbI₃ layer with a passivated surface and an Ohmic, non-selective back contact. The spin density and spin currents are evaluated by solving the drift-diffusion equations for a simplified 3-dimensional Rashba model of the electronic structure of the valence and conduction bands. We provide expressions for the photon flux required to induce measurable spin densities, and to generate spin currents sufficient for switching an adjacent thin film ferromagnet.

Citation

Physical Review B

Volume

93

Issue

15

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.155432

Local Download

Citation

Li, J. and Haney, P. (2016), Optical Spintronics in Organic-Inorganic Perovskites Photovoltaics, Physical Review B, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.155432, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=919936 (Accessed October 20, 2025)