Abstract
All-inorganic lead halide perovskites (CsPbX3, X = Cl, Br or I) are becoming increasingly important for energy conversion and optoelectronics because of their outstanding performance and enhanced environmental stability. Morphing perovskites into specific shapes and geometries without damaging their intrinsic functional properties is attractive for designing devices and manufacturing. However, inorganic semiconductors are often intrinsically brittle at room temperature, except for some recently reported layered or van der Waals semiconductors. Here, by in situ compression, we demonstrate that single-crystal CsPbX3 micropillars can be substantially morphed into distinct shapes (cubic, L and Z shapes, rectangular arches and so on) without localized cleavage or cracks. Such exceptional plasticity is enabled by successive slips of partial dislocations on multiple \(\{110\}\langle 1\bar{1}0 \rangle\) systems, as evidenced by atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy and first-principles and atomistic simulations. The optoelectronic performance and bandgap of the devices were unchanged. Thus, our results suggest that CsPbX3 perovskites, as potential deformable inorganic semiconductors, may have profound implications for the manufacture of advanced optoelectronics and energy systems.
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The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC) under Grant Nos. RFS2021-1S05 (Y.L.), 11200421 (S.Z.) and CityU11306520 (J.C.H.), the City University of Hong Kong under Grant No. 9610461 (Y.L.) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China/RGC Joint Research Scheme under Grant No. N_HKU159/22 (Y.L.).
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Y.L. and X.L. conceived the research. Y.L., S.Z., F.-R.C. and J.C.H. supervised the research. X.L. performed the experiments. Y.M. synthesized the samples and investigated the optoelectronic devices. W.L. fabricated the FIB samples and performed part of the analyses. S.Z. and J.Z. performed the simulations and calculations. C.D., H.W., S.-W.H. and R.F. performed part of the analysis. X.L., Y.M., W.L., F.-R.C., S.Z., J.C.H. and Y.L. analysed the data and wrote the initial manuscript. All authors contributed to the final manuscript and approved the submission.
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Supplementary Notes 1–9, Figs. 1–15, Tables 1–2, Video captions 1 and 2 and refs. 1–11.
Supplementary Video 1
Morphing multiple CsPbX3 (X = Cl, Br or I) single-crystal pillars into various distinct geometries. Played at 40× speed (Fig. 1f–i) and 10× speed (Fig. 1j,k).
Supplementary Video 2
The multislip-enabled morphing of a CsPbBr3 single-crystal pillar (Fig. 2a–h), played at 20× speed.
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Li, X., Meng, Y., Li, W. et al. Multislip-enabled morphing of all-inorganic perovskites. Nat. Mater. 22, 1175–1181 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01631-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01631-z