A One-Dimensional Organic Lead Chloride Hybrid with Excitation-Dependent Broadband Emissions

Organic–inorganic metal halide hybrids have emerged as a new class of materials with fascinating optical and electronic properties. The exceptional structure tunability has enabled the development of materials with various dimensionalities at the molecular level, from three-dimensional (3D) to 2D, 1D, and 0D. Here, we report a new 1D lead chloride hybrid, C₄N₂H₁₄PbCl₄, which exhibits unusual inverse excitation-dependent broadband emission from bluish-green to yellow. Density functional theory calculations were performed to better understand the mechanism of this excitation-dependent broadband emission. This 1D hybrid material is found to have two emission centers, corresponding to the self-trapped excitons (STEs) and vacancy-bound excitons. The excitation-dependent emission is due to different populations of these two types of excitons generated at different excitation wavelengths. This work shows the rich chemistry and physics of organic–inorganic metal halide hybrids and paves the way to achieving novel light emitters with excitation-dependent broadband emissions at room temperature.