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Suppression of temperature quenching in perovskite nanocrystals for efficient and thermally stable light-emitting diodes

Nature Photonics volume 15, pages 379–385 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The thermal quenching of light emission is a critical bottleneck that hampers the real-world application of lead halide perovskite nanocrystals in both electroluminescent and down-conversion light-emitting diodes. Here, we report CsPbBr3 perovskite nanocrystals with a temperature-independent emission efficiency of near unity and constant decay kinetics up to a temperature of 373 K. This unprecedented regime is obtained by a fluoride post-synthesis treatment that produces fluorine-rich surfaces with a wider energy gap than the inner nanocrystal core, yielding suppressed carrier trapping, improved thermal stability and efficient charge injection. Light-emitting diodes incorporating these fluoride-treated perovskite nanocrystals show a low turn-on voltage and spectrally pure green electroluminescence with an external quantum efficiency as high as 19.3% at 350 cd m−2. Importantly, nearly 80% of the room-temperature external quantum efficiency is preserved at 343 K, in contrast to the dramatic drop commonly observed for standard CsPbBr3 perovskite nanocrystal light-emitting diodes. These results provide a promising pathway for high-performance, practical light-emitting diodes based on perovskite nanostructures.

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Fig. 1: Evolution of lead halide perovskite LED performance.
Fig. 2: Optical properties and electronic structure of fluoride-treated CsPbBr3 PNCs.
Fig. 3: Suppression of emission thermal quenching.
Fig. 4: Structural characterization.
Fig. 5: Thermally stable LEDs based on CsPbBr3:F nanocrystals.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (no. 2017YFE0127100), Guangdong Province’s 2018–2019 Key R&D Program (2019B010924001), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 21773155), the Shanghai Sailing Program (19YF1422200), the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Scientific and Technological Innovation Funds, and the Engineering Research Center for Nanophotonics & Advanced Instrument, the Ministry of Education, East China Normal University (no. 202001). Financial support from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) through grant Dipartimenti di Eccellenza - 2017 ‘Materials For Energy’. We thank the Instrumental Analysis Center of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the workers (J. Ding, X. Ding, N. Zhang, X. Guo and Y. Han) for their help with XPS, TOF-SIMS and TEM analyses. We also thank H. Song from the School of Chemistry of Sun Yat-sen University for help with the aberration-corrected STEM measurements.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Mingming Liu, Qun Wan, Huamiao Wang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Mingming Liu, Qun Wan, Weilin Zheng, Long Kong, Qi Zhang, Congyang Zhang, Qinggang Zhang & Liang Li

  2. State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Huamiao Wang & Xiaochuan Sun

  3. Dipartimento di Scienza dei Materiali, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Francesco Carulli & Sergio Brovelli

  4. Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, Shanghai, China

    Liang Li

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Contributions

L.L. conceived this study. M.L. synthesized and characterized the nanocrystals and performed the thermal quenching experiments. Q.W. fabricated and tested the LEDs. H.W. and X.S. performed the DFT calculations. F.C. performed the optical characterization under the supervision of S.B., M.L. and W.Z. with the assistance of Qinggang Zhang; L.K., Qi Zhang and C.Z. performed the structural characterization. L.L. and S.B. analysed the data. S.B. wrote the paper in consultation with all authors. M.L, Q.W. and H.W. contributed equally to this work.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sergio Brovelli or Liang Li.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks Yangchuan Xing and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Liu, M., Wan, Q., Wang, H. et al. Suppression of temperature quenching in perovskite nanocrystals for efficient and thermally stable light-emitting diodes. Nat. Photonics 15, 379–385 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00766-2

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