TY - JOUR
T1 - Liquid-Phase Transfer of Organic–Inorganic Halide Perovskite Films for TEM Investigation and Planar Heterojunction Fabrication
AU - Guo, Shuai
AU - Zhang, Xiangzhao
AU - Hao, Mingwei
AU - Duan, Tianwei
AU - Wang, Weizhen
AU - Li, Zhimin
AU - Liu, Guiwu
AU - Cai, Songhua
AU - Zhou, Yuanyuan
N1 - Funding Information:
S.G. and X.Z. contributed equally to this work. S.C., S.G., W.W., and Z.L. acknowledged the support of startup grants from the Department of Applied Physics, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (1-BD96, 1-BDCM), the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Fund (Nos. 15306021 and 15306122), and the open subject of National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University (No. M34001). Y.Z., X.Z., M.H., and T.D. acknowledged the Early Career Scheme (No. 22300221), General Research Fund (No. 12302822) from the Hong Kong RGC, and the Excellent Young Scientists Funds (No. 52222318) from National Natural Science Foundation of China. Y.Z. also acknowledged the start-up grant of HKUST. T.D. acknowledged the support of the RGC Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme. X.Z. acknowledged the support of the K. C. Wong Education Foundation. The experimental assistance of T. Liu from ΣLab (www.alvinyzhou.com) is acknowledged.
Publisher copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Optical Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
PY - 2023/10/10
Y1 - 2023/10/10
N2 - Organic–inorganic halide perovskites (OIHPs) show high promise in optical and electronic applications such as solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and nonlinear optics. However, the fundamental knowledge of the atomic-scale microstructures in OIHP thin films is limited due to the challenge in characterizing them using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Here a solution-phase “release-and-transfer” method is demonstrated, which entails the lifting of OIHP films from their original substrates while maintaining the film integrity, followed by a sequential transfer onto a TEM grid. The freestanding nature of the OIHP films with a nanoscale thickness, prepared as such, allows a direct TEM observation in the plan view, complementing those typical cross-sectional views enabled by focus-ion-beam specimen fabrication. Using low-dose scanning TEM, the atomic-scale microstructure of transferred OIHP films is confirmed to be generally maintained, while the microstrain existing in original films is largely relaxed. This “release-and-transfer” method is generic to both standard 3D and low-dimensional OIHPs. Based on a simple layer-by-layer transfer, the fabrication of a 2D–3D planar heterojunction with a good interfacial contact and optoelectronic properties is achieved. This unique methodology offers new opportunities to accelerate the fundamental and practical developments of OIHP materials and devices.
AB - Organic–inorganic halide perovskites (OIHPs) show high promise in optical and electronic applications such as solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and nonlinear optics. However, the fundamental knowledge of the atomic-scale microstructures in OIHP thin films is limited due to the challenge in characterizing them using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Here a solution-phase “release-and-transfer” method is demonstrated, which entails the lifting of OIHP films from their original substrates while maintaining the film integrity, followed by a sequential transfer onto a TEM grid. The freestanding nature of the OIHP films with a nanoscale thickness, prepared as such, allows a direct TEM observation in the plan view, complementing those typical cross-sectional views enabled by focus-ion-beam specimen fabrication. Using low-dose scanning TEM, the atomic-scale microstructure of transferred OIHP films is confirmed to be generally maintained, while the microstrain existing in original films is largely relaxed. This “release-and-transfer” method is generic to both standard 3D and low-dimensional OIHPs. Based on a simple layer-by-layer transfer, the fabrication of a 2D–3D planar heterojunction with a good interfacial contact and optoelectronic properties is achieved. This unique methodology offers new opportunities to accelerate the fundamental and practical developments of OIHP materials and devices.
KW - halide perovskites
KW - microstructure
KW - scanning transmission electron microscopy
KW - solar cells
KW - transfer
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85173772823&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/adom.202301255
DO - 10.1002/adom.202301255
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2195-1071
SP - 1
EP - 9
JO - Advanced Optical Materials
JF - Advanced Optical Materials
ER -