Localized Heating Tailors Nucleation for Reproducible Growth of Thin Halide Perovskite Single Crystals

Sujit Kumar, Alexandra Rukban, Julia Sinisi, Vinayaka H. Damle, David Cahen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Halide perovskites (HaPs) are functional semiconductors that can be prepared in a simple, near-room-temperature process. With thin polycrystalline HaP films, excellent solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and (also as single crystals) high-energy radiation detectors have been demonstrated. The very low single-crystal defect densities make HaP thin single crystals (TSCs), instead of polycrystalline HaP films an attractive option, to boost device performances and for fundamental research. However, growing TSCs is challenging primarily because of random multiple nucleations, which, in the often-used space-confined geometry, is favored at the substrate boundaries, where loss of organo-amines and solvents occurs. We show that fewer and better-quality thin crystals nucleate and grow reproducibly away from the substrate edges in the substrate center, if we localize the heating (needed for inverse-temperature crystallization, the preferred crystal growth method) there. Using a further finding of ours that lowers the crystallization temperature, TSCs of methylammonium lead bromide (MAPbBr3), the HaP we focus on here, grow also directly on flexible substrates.1H NMR measurements show how the observed lower crystallization temperature results from slow humidity-mediated chemical changes in the HaP precursor solution during its storage.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)7160-7167
Number of pages8
JournalCrystal Growth and Design
Volume22
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Chemical Society.

Funding

The authors thank Dr. Yishay Feldman for the XRD measurements. S.K. held an Israel Council of Higher Learning PBC/VATAT postdoctoral fellowship at the Bar-Ilan University. The research received financial support at BIU from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF-NSFC). At the Weizmann Institute of Science, the work was supported by WIS’ Sustainability and Energy Research Initiative (SAERI). J.S. thanks the WIS, Tech. Univ. Munich, and DAAD for financial support.

FundersFunder number
ISF-NSFC
Israel Council of Higher Learning PBC
SAERI
VATAT
WIS’ Sustainability and Energy Research Initiative
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
Weizmann Institute of Science
Bar-Ilan University
Israel Science Foundation

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