In
Figure 1, characterization of the films by X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirms the crystallization of the sample in a perovskite structure, with the presence of the standard peaks associated with the (110), (220), and (330) reflection planes, respectively. The peak intensity at 14° suggests that the main orientation of the perovskite film is (110) [
28]. XRD can also characterize the residual strains through the lattice parameters. Indeed, the tensile or compressive strains can be respectively associated with the shift of the peaks to lower or higher diffraction angles. Residual strains are often non-uniform and complex to analyze from the peak position alone. Another indicator of strains is the broadening of the XRD peaks compared to the fully-relaxed state [
19,
29].
3.1. Williamson Hall Characterization
The Williamson Hall (W-H) equation
1 can be used to quantify the strain-induced broadening resulting from crystal imperfections [
30,
31,
32], and structural imperfections such as dislocations, vacancies, stacking defects [
33,
34]:
where
is the fullwidth halfmaximum (FWHM) of the peak, k is the Scherrer constant equal to 0.94,
is the X-ray source wavelength and D is the crystallite size,
is the peak position (
) and
is the strain. The fundamental difference between WH’s method and Scherrer’s method is that WH considers both the crystallite size and microstrains which are often interrelated.
Williamson-Hall curves in
Figure 2 show the
vs 4.
evolution measured from
films annealed at 25, 50, 70, 90 and 110
. The residual strain can be calculated directly from the slope for each curve fitting. In
Figure 2, the strain values calculated reveal an interesting trend. It starts with relatively high compressive strain at low annealing temperatures (below 40
). The residual strains decrease as the annealing temperature increases to 70
. Over 90
, the residual strains become increasingly tensile. We can conclude from this first test that the annealing temperature can generates three areas of strains: compressive, tensile, and a relaxed zone at a temperature around 80
. Based on our observations, we can expect an improved performance of the perovskite films.
3.2. GIXRD Characterization
Grazing incidence XRD is a very useful technique to characterize the structure of thin films. It can also directly probe the strain distribution in perovskite films [
5]. As such, we can use GIXRD to analyze the variations in the in-plane residual strains for the perovskite films annealed at different temperatures. The measurements shown in
Figure 3a are performed in the
-mode [
5,
35], by fixing the angle
and varying the instrument tilt angle
.
In
Figure 3b,c, we analyze the strains in perovskite films annealed at 50, 70, 90, and 110
using GIXRD.
Figure 3b illustrates the plot of 2
vs
), where the slope of the fitted curves yields the strain coefficients. A negative slope suggests tensile strains, while a positive slope suggest compressive strains.
Figure 3d–h clearly indicate the distribution of compressive and tensile strain gradients for annealing temperatures from 50 to 110° C, respectively. While thermal energy can cause significant strain levels in the crystal lattice, it should be noted that the perovskite crystal structure still remains thermally stable between 50
and 110
[
36]. These GIXRD strain measurements are consistent and strongly support the W-H measurements from
Figure 2. In
Figure 3, residual strains appear compressive at temperatures below 70
and tensile at temperatures above 90
. We can infer that strain relaxation can be achieved between 75-85
. Based on the XRD (W-H) and GIXRD analysis, we concur that
has a relaxed cubic structure at 80 ± 5
(from 80
the mixed crystals of perovskite transform from tetragonal to cubic phase) this relaxed symmetrical structure is favorable to improved electrical properties [
36,
37].
3.4. Hall Effect Characterization
Carrier mobility can be directly measured using the Hall-effect technique represented in
Figure 5. Here, a transverse magnetic field of 0.7
is applied to all samples. In
Figure 5, all samples display a p-type behavior indicated by the positive Hall voltage. This expected result can be explained by the large amounts of Pb,
, Cl vacancies and I present in the film [
39,
40]. Due to lower formation energies, Pb and
vacancies are known to play a significant role in the p-type behavior of
thin films [
41,
42]. Due to lower formation energies, Pb and
vacancies are known to play a significant role in the p-type behavior of
thin films [
42,
43,
44].
Figure 5 shows the Hall effect measurements used to identify the corresponding change in carrier mobilities and resistivities with increasing annealing temperatures. The carrier mobility reaches its highest value of 10
/
/
at 80
, which is consistent with previous reports [
45,
46]. We already established that
films annealed at this temperature are strain-relaxed. Above 75
(relaxation zone), the structure adopts cubic symmetry and can achieve high stability since the entropy reduction in the inorganic cage compensates for the high dynamic disorder of the organic cations methylammonium [
37,
47]. This cubic phase is also known to offer better electronic properties than the orthorhombic and tetragonal phases for symmetry reasons [
48,
49,
50].
The thermal behavior for the Hall mobility can be described by the expression [
51]:
where,
is the exponential prefactor,
is the Boltzmann constant and Ea is the activation energy.
Figure 6 shows ln(
) as a function of 1000/T measured between 298 and 385 °
. The activation energy Ea corresponds to the potential energy barrier height [
51], and it can be directly extracted from the slope of the linear fit. From
Figure 6, the activation energy for perovskite films with compressive strains is found to be 400
, while tensile strain reduces the activation energy to 50
. These results are also consistent with previous reports [
52]. This change in activation energy originates from the slope at approximately 80
, suggesting significantly-reduced activation energy due to film relaxation. It has been previously reported that
and
vacancies can easily migrate to a neighboring site due to their low activation energy [
53]. This variation of the activation energy with temperature can be directly associated with the film’s residual strains [
54].
Using the Hall mobility measurements from
Figure 6, it becomes possible to access the mean carrier path length Lm and the mean free time (
) (
Figure 6) in the
thin films using the conventional Drude-Sommerfeld model [
42]:
Where
is the effective mass of the hole given by the expression:
Where
is the permittivity of free space, and
is the relative dielectric constant used between 5.6 (high frequency) and 25.7 (low frequency) [
42]. For the calculation of
we assumed
= 9 based on the hydrogen model [
55]. The values of
are estimated at 0.3
and 2.4
for the tensile and compressive films respectively [
42,
56,
57], where
represents the rest mass of the electron. Results from
Figure 6 suggest that films subjected to compressive and tensile strains respectively have lower Lm and
, respectively. Both parameters peak at 80
, which corresponds to the relaxation region (strain-free) regime. At this temperature, mixed halide perovskites make the transition from the tetragonal to the cubic phase due to the tilt of the inorganic
octahedron and the rotational shift of the organic
, resulting in their increased average mobilities [
50]. Consequently, these results confirm reports that phase shift can change the physical properties of mixed halide perovskites films and positively influence their electrical properties [
42].
Figure 7a,b displays the absorption spectrum for samples annealed at 60
, 80
, and 110
exhibiting compressive, relaxed, and tensile residual strains, respectively. The spectra in
Figure 7a show stronger UV absorption for the tensile-strained and relaxed samples. When the residual strains transition from compressive to tensile, the bandgap of the film in
Figure 7c show a slight increase from 1.56 to 1.57 . After four days of storage in an ambient environment, the absorption spectra from
Figure 7b appearsis significantly reduced for both tensile- and compressively-strained samples, compared to the sample annealed at 80
. Moreover, this degradation as the strained samples become transparent also translates in a significant bandgap increase from 1.59 to 2.34 seen in
Figure 7d–f. The low absorption of these samples can be attributed to incomplete crystallization during annealing at 60
. Poor-quality perovskite films often result from incomplete solvent DMF evaporation. Conversely, high-temperature annealing at 100
promotes rapid solvent evaporation, preventing uniform surface filling and poor film quality as shown in
Figure 4d.
3.5. Raman Characterization
Raman micro-spectroscopy measurements from
Figure 8a,b are performed with a very low laser power of 0.5
at 532
wavelength to avoid any laser-induced damage. For the same reason, the laser beam as focused with a 10x objective. All measurements are done under ambient conditions. To perform the Raman measurements, we slowly increase the laser power until the main perovskite peaks are visible. Then the laser is shifted to a new position to record the Raman spectrum for a pristine perovskite. To avoid the laser intensity from impacting the perovskite film’s crystallization, we utilized Equation
6 to estimate the sample’s temperature based on the intensity ratio between Stokes/Anti-Stokes peaks [
58,
59] as shown in
Figure 8b:
Where is the Boltzmann constant, is the frequency of the excitation source, and T is the sample’s temperature.
The inorganic-organic sublattices of the perovskite have different vibrational frequencies covering the range from 50 to 150 /
with phonon energies of 6-11
(50- 90 /
) and 11-20
(90- 150 /
) [
60].
Figure 8c–e display the statistical temperature graphics calculated using Equation
6, for samples with residual tensile strains, no strains, and compressive strains for a phonon energy of 12
at peak 100 /
[
60]. The maximum temperature reached by the samples due to laser-induced heating is 324 °K. This value remains lower than the lowest annealing temperatures, ensuring that the 532
laser-induced heating does not impact the crystalline structure of the different perovskite samples.
Finally, we can also evaluate the impact of different strain levels on the film degradation using Raman micro-spectroscopy. To do so, measurements are performed every 30 minutes for 4 days at a sufficiently low excitation power to prevent laser-induced heating. The Raman spectrum in
Figure 8a clearly indicates the presence of vibrational peaks at 53, 65, 92, and 100 /
with a broader Raman band at 170 /
, which can be attributed to the Pb-I and Pb-Cl perovskite layers [
61]. The sharp peaks between 53 /
and 92 /
are attributed to the bending and stretching of Pb-I bonds, which are modes of inorganic cages [
62]. Meanwhile, the bands at 100 /
can be attributed to the vibrations of the organic
cations [
63]. After 24 hours, the peak intensity decreases, and no new vibrational bands are observed, implying the structure remained unaltered. It is known that incorporation of
into the crystal lattice is measured by solvating of
and the dissolving of the cations [
64,
65]. The absence of
can increase defect density and cause a slight displacement of atoms in the crystalline structure, leading to fluctuations in vibrational bands [
65,
66].
Figure 8a shows a redshift for all bands, suggesting an increased length of the chemical bond. Previous research confirms that the redshift in these bands results from stress exerted by the
molecule on the atomic bond related to this vibrational mode and the shift induced by the
vacancies [
65]. However, the observed shift is not consistent, as the penetration of moisture in the film is not uniform due to the heterogeneity of the microstructural morphology, defects, and internal stresses.
In
Figure 9a–c we compare the degradation of the strained films. As expected, results from
Figure 9d–f clearly suggest that thermally-relaxed films show lower degradation compared with tensile- or compressively-strained films. Indeed, the average peak intensity decrease for the thermally-relaxed film never exceeds 10 %. In constrast, films with residual tensile and compressive strains respectively show a decrease in peak intensity of more than 20 % and 45 %. This is consistent with previous observations that strained films degrade more rapidly due to their crystal structure enabling easier incorporation of
molecules. Surface defects and strain-induced distortions in the crystal lattice weaken the structure, rendering it less resilient to external factors and thus accelerating its degradation [
67,
68].