Ligand assisted growth of perovskite single crystals with low defect density

Ye Liu; Xiaopeng Zheng; Yanjun Fang; Ying Zhou; Zhenyi Ni; Xun Xiao; Shangshang Chen; Jinsong Huang

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-21934-6

Ligand assisted growth of perovskite single crystals with low defect density

Nat Commun. 2021 Mar 16;12(1):1686. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21934-6.

Authors

Ye Liu^{1

2}, Xiaopeng Zheng², Yanjun Fang², Ying Zhou¹, Zhenyi Ni¹, Xun Xiao¹, Shangshang Chen¹, Jinsong Huang³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Physical Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA.
² Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68588, USA.
³ Department of Applied Physical Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA. jhuang@unc.edu.

Abstract

A low defect density in metal halide perovskite single crystals is critical to achieve high performance optoelectronic devices. Here we show the reduction of defect density in perovskite single crystals grown by a ligand-assisted solution process with 3-(decyldimethylammonio)-propane-sulfonate inner salt (DPSI) as an additive. DPSI ligands anchoring with lead ions on perovskite crystal surfaces not only suppress nucleation in solution, but also regulate the addition of proper ions to the growing surface, which greatly enhances the crystal quality. The grown CH₃NH₃PbI₃ crystals show better crystallinity and a 23-fold smaller trap density of 7 × 10¹⁰ cm^-3 than the optimized control crystals. The enhanced material properties result in significantly suppressed ion migration and superior X-ray detection sensitivity of CH₃NH₃PbI₃ detectors of (2.6 ± 0.4) × 10⁶ µC Gy^-1air cm^-2 for 60 kVp X-ray and the lowest detectable dose rate reaches (5.0 ± 0.7) nGy s^-1, which enables reduced radiation dose to patients in medical X-ray diagnostics.