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Laser cooling of organic–inorganic lead halide perovskites

Nature Photonics volume 10, pages 115–121 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optical irradiation with suitable energy can cool solids, a phenomenon known as optical refrigeration, first proposed in 1929 and experimentally achieved in ytterbium-doped glasses in 1995. Since then, considerable progress has been made in various rare earth element-doped materials, with a recent record of cooling to 91 K directly from ambient temperatures. For practical use and to suit future applications of optical refrigeration, the discovery of materials with facile and scalable synthesis and high cooling power density will be required. Herein we present the realization of a net cooling of 23.0 K in micrometre-thick 3D CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPbI3) and 58.7 K in exfoliated 2D (C6H5C2H4NH3)2PbI4 (PhEPbI4) perovskite crystals directly from room temperature. We found that the perovskite crystals exhibit strong photoluminescence upconversion and near unity external quantum efficiency, properties that are responsible for the realization of net laser cooling. Our findings indicate that solution-processed perovskite thin films may be a highly suitable candidate for constructing integrated optical cooler devices.

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Figure 1: Morphology and structural characterization of 3D and 2D perovskites.
Figure 2: Optical characterization of 3D and 2D perovskites.
Figure 3: Net laser cooling observations for 3D perovskite CH3NH3PbI3.
Figure 4: Net laser cooling observations for 2D perovskite (C6H5C2H5NH3)2PbI4.
Figure 5: A macroscopic 2D perovskite optical cooler cooling a CdSe nanobelt thermal load.
Figure 6: Condition for laser cooling in CH3NH3PbI3 platelets.

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Acknowledgements

Q.X. gratefully acknowledges the strong support of this work from Singapore National Research Foundation through an Investigatorship Award (NRF-NRFI2015–03), Ministry of Education via two AcRF Tier 2 grants (MOE2013-T2-1-049 and MOE2015-T2-1-047) and Tier1 grant (2013-T1-002-232). This work was also supported in part by AFOSR through its Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (FA2386-13-1-4112).

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Author notes

  1. Chao Shen & Jun Zhang

    Present address: Present address: State Key Laboratory for Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637371, Singapore

    Son-Tung Ha, Chao Shen, Jun Zhang & Qihua Xiong

  2. NOVITAS, Nanoelectronics Centre of Excellence, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Qihua Xiong

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Contributions

S.T.H. and Q.X. conceived the idea; S.T.H., C.S., J.Z., and Q.X. designed the experiments; S.T.H. and C.S. performed the experiments; S.T.H., C.S., J.Z., and Q.X. analysed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qihua Xiong.

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Ha, ST., Shen, C., Zhang, J. et al. Laser cooling of organic–inorganic lead halide perovskites. Nature Photon 10, 115–121 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.243

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