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Exploiting the full advantages of colloidal perovskite nanocrystals for large-area efficient light-emitting diodes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 17, pages 590–597 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cost-effective, high-throughput industrial applications of metal halide perovskites in large-area displays are hampered by the fundamental difficulty of controlling the process of polycrystalline film formation from precursors, which results in the random growth of crystals, leading to non-uniform large grains and thus low electroluminescence efficiency in large-area perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs). Here we report that highly efficient large-area PeLEDs with high uniformity can be realized through the use of colloidal perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs), decoupling the crystallization of perovskites from film formation. PNCs were precrystallized and surrounded by organic ligands, and thus they were not affected by the film formation process, in which a simple modified bar-coating method facilitated the evaporation of residual solvent to provide uniform large-area films. PeLEDs incorporating the uniform bar-coated PNC films achieved an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 23.26% for a pixel size of 4 mm2 and an EQE of 22.5% for a large pixel area of 102 mm2 with high reproducibility. This method provides a promising approach towards the development of large-scale industrial displays and solid-state lighting using perovskite emitters.

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Fig. 1: Characteristics of colloidal PNCs for large-area bar-coated PeLEDs.
Fig. 2: Suppressed ion migration and charge trapping in PNC films.
Fig. 3: Photophysical analysis of PNC and polycrystalline films fabricated by m-bar coating and spin coating.
Fig. 4: Characteristics of FA0.875GA0.125PbBr3 PNC-PeLEDs.
Fig. 5: Characteristics of large-area FA0.875GA0.125PbBr3 PNC-PeLEDs.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant, funded by the Korean government (MSIT; NRF-2016R1A3B1908431). This research was also supported by the Creative Materials Discovery Program through the NRF, funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2018M3D1A1058536).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Young-Hoon Kim, Jinwoo Park, Sungjin Kim.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Young-Hoon Kim, Jinwoo Park, Sungjin Kim, Joo Sung Kim, Su-Hun Jeong & Tae-Woo Lee

  2. Department of Energy Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Young-Hoon Kim

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Hengxing Xu & Bin Hu

  4. School of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Institute of Engineering Research, Research Institute of Advanced Materials, Soft Foundry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Tae-Woo Lee

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Contributions

T.-W.L. designed and supervised the study, analysed the data and prepared the manuscript. Y.-H.K. and J.P. designed the study, performed experiments, analysed the data and prepared the manuscript. S.K. and J.S.K. fabricated the perovskite polycrystal and PNC films. S.-H.J. helped with transient EL measurements. H.X. and B.H. performed and analysed magnetic field-dependent measurements. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tae-Woo Lee.

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Nature Nanotechnology thanks Mingjian Yuan, Haizheng Zhong and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Text 1 and 2, Figs. 1–24 and Tables 1–3.

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Kim, YH., Park, J., Kim, S. et al. Exploiting the full advantages of colloidal perovskite nanocrystals for large-area efficient light-emitting diodes. Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 590–597 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01113-4

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