Observation of Internal Photoinduced Electron and Hole Separation in Hybrid Two-Dimentional Perovskite Films
Two-dimensional (2D) organolead halide perovskites are promising for various optoelectronic applications. Here iChEM researcher Prof. Shengye Jin from DICP reported a unique spontaneous charge (electron/hole) separation property in multilayered (BA)2(MA)n−1PbnI3n+1 (BA = CH3(CH2)3NH3+, MA = CH3NH3+) 2D perovskite films by studying the charge carrier dynamics using ultrafast transient absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Surprisingly, the 2D perovskite films, although nominally prepared as “n = 4”, are found to be mixture of multiple perovskite phases, with n = 2, 3, 4 and ≈ ∞, that naturally align in the order of n along the direction perpendicular to the substrate. Driven by the band alignment between 2D perovskites phases, they observe consecutive photoinduced electron transfer from small-n to large-n phases and hole transfer in the opposite direction on hundreds of picoseconds inside the 2D film of ∼358 nm thickness. This internal charge transfer efficiently separates electrons and holes to the upper and bottom surfaces of the films, which is a unique property beneficial for applications in photovoltaics and other optoelectronics devices.

Paper link:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b12581