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Melting of hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites

Nature Chemistry volume 13, pages 778–785 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Several organic–inorganic hybrid materials from the metal–organic framework (MOF) family have been shown to form stable liquids at high temperatures. Quenching then results in the formation of melt-quenched MOF glasses that retain the three-dimensional coordination bonding of the crystalline phase. These hybrid glasses have intriguing properties and could find practical applications, yet the melt-quench phenomenon has so far remained limited to a few MOF structures. Here we turn to hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites—which occupy a prominent position within materials chemistry owing to their functional properties such as ion transport, photoconductivity, ferroelectricity and multiferroicity—and show that a series of dicyanamide-based hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites undergo melting. Our combined experimental–computational approach demonstrates that, on quenching, they form glasses that largely retain their solid-state inorganic–organic connectivity. The resulting materials show very low thermal conductivities (~0.2 W m−1 K−1), moderate electrical conductivities (10−3–10−5 S m−1) and polymer-like thermomechanical properties.

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Fig. 1: Glass formation from hybrid perovskites.
Fig. 2: Structural insights into melting and glass structure.
Fig. 3: Pair distribution function analysis.
Fig. 4: Physical properties of melt-quenched glasses.
Fig. 5: Comparison of physical properties of melt-quenched glasses with various materials.

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Data availability

Representative input files for the molecular dynamics simulations are available online in our data repository at https://github.com/fxcoudert/citable-data. The experimental data that support the findings of this study (characterization and analytical data for both crystalline and glass materials, structural refinements, a.c. electrical conductivity experiments and thermal conductivity measurements, source data for all experimental Supplementary figures) are available as Supplementary Information and in Symplectic Elements with the identifier https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.63032.

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Acknowledgements

B.K.S. thanks the Royal Society and the Science and Engineering Research Board of India (SERB) for their combined support in the form of a Newton International Fellowship (NIF\R1\180163). T.D.B. thanks the Royal Society for a University Research Fellowship (UF150021) and a research grant (RG94426), and the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, New Zealand for a University of Cambridge Visiting Canterbury Fellowship. T.D.B. and L.N.M. also thank the Leverhulme Trust for a Philip Leverhulme Prize. The EPSRC is acknowledged for a Doctoral Training Studentship to A.R.H., a PhD studentship award to A.F.S. under the industrial CASE scheme along with Johnson Matthey PLC (JM11106), and a PhD studentship award to A.P. via the National Productivity Investment Fund (EP/R51231X/1) and grant EP/K039687/1. M.D. and F.-X.C. acknowledge financial support from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the project “MATAREB” (ANR-18-CE29-0009-01) and access to high-performance computing platforms provided by GENCI grant A0070807069. A.D. acknowledges DST-INSPIRE (IF160050), Government of India, for awarding his fellowship. S.K.S. gratefully thanks DST, Government of India, for the infrastructural facilities. B.K.S. acknowledges R. Cornell (University of Cambridge) for his help with performing the dynamic-mechanical measurements. F.B. thanks K. J. Sanders (McMaster University) for assistance with the SHAPs pulses and K. Luzyanin (University of Liverpool) for collecting the liquid-state NMR data. J.M.B.-G. acknowledges Xunta de Galicia for a postdoctoral fellowship. X.M. is grateful for support from the Royal Society. M.F.T. would like to thank Corning Incorporated for project funding. We acknowledge the assistance of L. Longley (University of Cambridge) with calorimetric data analysis. The authors gratefully acknowledge the provision of synchrotron access to Beamline I15-1 (EE20038) at the Diamond Light Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Bikash Kumar Shaw, Adam F. Sapnik, Michael F. Thorne, Lauren N. McHugh, Juan M. Bermudez-Garcia, Xavier Moya & Thomas D. Bennett

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Ashlea R. Hughes, Stephen Moss, Andrea Pugliese & Frédéric Blanc

  3. Chimie ParisTech, PSL University, CNRS, Institut de Recherche de Chimie Paris, Paris, France

    Maxime Ducamp & François-Xavier Coudert

  4. School of Materials Sciences, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Jadavpur, India

    Anup Debnath & Shyamal K. Saha

  5. Diamond Light Source Ltd, Diamond House, Harwell Campus, Didcot, UK

    Dean S. Keeble & Philip Chater

  6. University of A Coruna, QuiMolMat Group, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Advanced Scientific Research Center (CICA), Zapateira, Spain

    Juan M. Bermudez-Garcia

  7. ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot, UK

    David A. Keen

  8. Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Frédéric Blanc

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  1. Bikash Kumar Shaw
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Contributions

B.K.S. and T.D.B. designed the project. A.R.H., A.P. and F.B. performed all NMR experiments and analysed the data. S.M. collected the HRMS data and analysed them with F.B. The electrical conductivity measurements were performed by B.K.S. and A.D. The electrical conductivity data were analysed by B.K.S. and S.K.S. The X-ray total scattering data were collected by T.D.B., A.F.S., M.F.T., L.N.M., D.A.K., D.S.K. and P.A.C. The total scattering data were analysed by B.K.S., D.A.K., A.F.S. and T.D.B. Interpretation and analysis of calorimetric data were aided by J.M.B.-G. and X.M. Molecular simulations were performed by M.D. and F.-X.C. who also analysed the data. B.K.S. collected and analysed all other data. All authors participated in manuscript writing, led by T.D.B. and B.K.S.

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Correspondence to Thomas D. Bennett.

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Supplementary text, Figs. 1–60 and Tables 1–4.

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Shaw, B.K., Hughes, A.R., Ducamp, M. et al. Melting of hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites. Nat. Chem. 13, 778–785 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-021-00681-7

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