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Bright and stable light-emitting diodes made with perovskite nanocrystals stabilized in metal–organic frameworks

Nature Photonics volume 15, pages 843–849 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Perovskite nanocrystals are exceptional candidates for light-emitting diodes (LEDs). However, they are unstable in the solid film and tend to degrade back to the bulk phase, which undermines their potential for LEDs. Here we demonstrate that perovskite nanocrystals stabilized in metal–organic framework (MOF) thin films make bright and stable LEDs. The perovskite nanocrystals in MOF thin films can maintain the photoluminescence and electroluminescence against continuous ultraviolet irradiation, heat and electrical stress. As revealed by optical and X-ray spectroscopy, the strong emission originates from localized carrier recombination. Bright LEDs made from perovskite-MOF nanocrystals are demonstrated with a maximum external quantum efficiency of over 15% and a high brightness of over 105 cd m−2 after the device reaches stabilization. During LED operation, the nanocrystals can be well preserved, free of ion migration or crystal merging through protection by the MOF matrix, leading to a stable performance over 50 hours.

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Fig. 1: PeMOF thin-film formation and characterization.
Fig. 2: TEM image analysis of MA-PeMOF thin films.
Fig. 3: Optical and X-ray spectroscopy characterization of PeMOF thin films.
Fig. 4: PeMOF LED device performance characteristics.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots and other findings within this report are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

S.S. and W.N. acknowledge support from the Laboratory Directed Research and Development programme at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). H.T. acknowledges financial support of the J. Robert Oppenheimer Distinguished Postdoc Fellowship at LANL. R.A.V. acknowledges support from the National Academy of Sciences Ford Foundation Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSFGRFP; grant number DGE–1656518). H.-H.H. acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 108-2113-M-002-015-MY3 and 108-2911-I-002-561), Academia Sinica (AS-iMATE-109-31) and the Center of Atomic Initiative for New Materials, National Taiwan University from the Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by LANL (contract number 89233218CNA000001). Part of this research used sector 8-ID-E and sector 11-ID-D of the Advanced Photon Source and Center for Nanoscale Materials, Office of Science User Facilities, supported by the US DOE, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract number DE-AC02-06CH11357. Part of work was supported by Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding from Argonne National Laboratory, provided by the Director, Office of Science, of the US DOE under contract number DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research used resources of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a US DOE Office of Science Facility, at Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract number DE-SC0012704. Part of this work was performed at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities, supported by the National Science Foundation under award ECCS-1542152.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Hsinhan Tsai, Shreetu Shrestha & Wanyi Nie

  2. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Rafael A. Vilá, Wenxiao Huang & Yi Cui

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rafael A. Vilá, Wenxiao Huang & Yi Cui

  4. X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Cunming Liu & Xiaoyi Zhang

  5. Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Cheng-Hung Hou

  6. Centre for Condensed Matter Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hsin-Hsiang Huang

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hsin-Hsiang Huang

  8. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Hsin-Hsiang Huang

  9. Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Xiewen Wen, Gary Wiederrecht & Xuedan Ma

  10. Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    Mingxing Li & Mircea Cotlet

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  1. Hsinhan Tsai
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Contributions

H.T. and W.N. conceived the idea, designed experiments, analysed data and wrote the paper. H.T. performed material synthesis, structure characterization and carried out the device fabrication and characterization; R.A.V. and W.H. performed the TEM characterization under the supervision of Y.C.; C.L. and X.Z. performed the XAS measurements and analysed the data. X.W. and G.W. performed the optical transient absorption measurements and analysed the data. S.S., M.L., M.C. and X.M. contributed to the optical spectroscopy measurements and analysed the data. C.-H.H. and H.-H.H. helped with characterizations and the atomic force microscopy and ToF-SIMs analysis. All authors discussed the results and co-wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hsinhan Tsai or Wanyi Nie.

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Peer review information Nature Photonics thanks Dawei Di and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Tsai, H., Shrestha, S., Vilá, R.A. et al. Bright and stable light-emitting diodes made with perovskite nanocrystals stabilized in metal–organic frameworks. Nat. Photon. 15, 843–849 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-021-00857-0

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