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Perovskite energy funnels for efficient light-emitting diodes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 11, pages 872–877 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Organometal halide perovskites exhibit large bulk crystal domain sizes, rare traps, excellent mobilities and carriers that are free at room temperature—properties that support their excellent performance in charge-separating devices. In devices that rely on the forward injection of electrons and holes, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), excellent mobilities contribute to the efficient capture of non-equilibrium charge carriers by rare non-radiative centres. Moreover, the lack of bound excitons weakens the competition of desired radiative (over undesired non-radiative) recombination. Here we report a perovskite mixed material comprising a series of differently quantum-size-tuned grains that funnels photoexcitations to the lowest-bandgap light-emitter in the mixture. The materials function as charge carrier concentrators, ensuring that radiative recombination successfully outcompetes trapping and hence non-radiative recombination. We use the new material to build devices that exhibit an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 8.8% and a radiance of 80 W sr−1 m−2. These represent the brightest and most efficient solution-processed near-infrared LEDs to date.

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Figure 1: Unit cell structure, electronic bandstructure and photoluminescent properties of quasi-2D perovskites.
Figure 2: Carrier funnelling in quasi-2D perovskite solids.
Figure 3: TA and time-resolved PL spectra for quasi-2D perovskite, 〈n〉 = 3 and 〈n〉 = 5.
Figure 4: EL and LED device performance of quasi-2D perovskites.

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Acknowledgements

This publication is based in part on work supported by Award KUS-11-009-21, made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), by the Ontario Research Fund Research Excellence Program, and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. L. N. Quan and D. H. Kim acknowledge the financial support by National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (2014R1A2A1A09005656). The authors thank R. Wolowiec and D. Kopilovic for their help during the course of the study.

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Author notes

  1. Pongsakorn Kanjanaboos

    Present address: Present address: Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, 272 Rama 6 Road, Ratchathewi District, Bangkok 10400, Thailand,

  2. Mingjian Yuan and Li Na Quan: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, 35 St George Street, Toronto, M5S 1A4, Ontario, Canada

    Mingjian Yuan, Li Na Quan, Riccardo Comin, Grant Walters, Randy Sabatini, Oleksandr Voznyy, Sjoerd Hoogland, Yongbiao Zhao, Eric M. Beauregard, Pongsakorn Kanjanaboos & Edward H. Sargent

  2. Department of Chemistry and Nano Science, Ewha Womans University, 52 Ewhayeodae-gil, Seodaemun-gu, 03760, Seoul, Korea

    Li Na Quan & Dong Ha Kim

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, 184 College Street, Toronto, M5S 3E4, Ontario, Canada

    Yongbiao Zhao & Zhenghong Lu

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Contributions

M.Y., L.N.Q., R.C. and E.H.S. conceived the idea and proposed the experimental design. M.Y., L.N.Q., R.C., S.H., D.H.K. and E.H.S. performed and analysed XRD, UV absorption, PL lifetime, transient absorption and XPS measurements. M.Y., L.N.Q., P.K. and E.M.B performed the device fabrication. R.C., G.W and R.S. performed the TA and PL decay measurements. M.Y., L.N.Q., Y.Z. and Z.L. tested the devices. M.Y., L.N.Q., R.C., O.V. and E.H.S. co-wrote the manuscript. All authors read and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dong Ha Kim or Edward H. Sargent.

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Yuan, M., Quan, L., Comin, R. et al. Perovskite energy funnels for efficient light-emitting diodes. Nature Nanotech 11, 872–877 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.110

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