Non-toxic and Stable Perovskite Nanocrystals for Harvesting Indoor Light and X-ray Detection.

The recent development of PNCs as low-cost and highly emissive materials made them central for fundamental science (i.e. chemistry, biology, and physics) as well as promising candidates for applied material science. Unfortunately, conventional PNCs are not stable in the long term and contain toxic metal (lead) – these limit their widespread applications. The goal of this project is to synthesize highly emissive non-toxic metal halide PNCs.Here we will tune the composition of perovskite structures (ABX3, A2BB’X6, and other related lower dimensional structures) by replacing A and B sites with other nontoxic metals (particularly rubidium, silver, and copper). We will explore new biomolecules and ionic liquids as ligands such as polypeptides, piperidinium salts, saccharides, and even RNA as capping ligands. We will stabilize these materials with two strategies. One is by encapsulating PNCs in a metal-organic framework of the same metal employed in the synthesis of perovskite, and the other is through an “emitter in the matrix” bulk crystal system. Nontoxic PNCs will also be used towards X-ray detection scintillator films and portable solar cells to harvest indoor lighting for advancing medical radiography and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Keywords:Perovskite Nanomaterials, Non-toxic perovskites, X-ray detection, Indoor solar cells

Disciplines:Main group chemistry, Solid state chemistry, Chemical characterisation of materials, Nanochemistry