posted on 2017-07-06, 00:00authored byAyan A. Zhumekenov, Victor M. Burlakov, Makhsud I. Saidaminov, Abdulilah Alofi, Md Azimul Haque, Bekir Turedi, Bambar Davaasuren, Ibrahim Dursun, Namchul Cho, Ahmed M. El-Zohry, Michele De Bastiani, Andrea Giugni, Bruno Torre, Enzo Di Fabrizio, Omar
F. Mohammed, Alexander Rothenberger, Tom Wu, Alain Goriely, Osman M. Bakr
The exciting intrinsic
properties discovered in single crystals
of metal halide perovskites still await their translation into optoelectronic
devices. The poor understanding and control of the crystallization
process of these materials are current bottlenecks retarding the shift
toward single-crystal-based optoelectronics. Here we theoretically
and experimentally elucidate the role of surface tension in the rapid
synthesis of perovskite single crystals by inverse temperature crystallization.
Understanding the nucleation and growth mechanisms enabled us to exploit
surface tension to direct the growth of monocrystalline films of perovskites
(AMX3, where A = CH3NH3+ or MA; M = Pb2+, Sn2+; X = Br–, I–) on the solution surface. We achieve up to
1 cm2-sized monocrystalline films with thickness on the
order of the charge carrier diffusion length (∼5–10
μm). Our work paves the way to control the crystallization process
of perovskites, including thin-film deposition, which is essential
to advance the performance benchmarks of perovskite optoelectronics.