Copper substituted methyl ammonium lead bromide grown using Non-Aqueous emulsion based synthesis technique

Abstract

Hybrid organic–inorganic lead halide perovskites have become a promising material in the field of optoelectronics because of their prospects in the opto-electronics industry. However, the presence of the element “Lead” makes them legislatively untouchable for large scale production and human use. Herein, we report a non-aqueous emulsion-based synthesis and characterization of Copper (Cu)-substituted methyl ammonium lead Bromide (CH3NH3Pb1-xCuxBr3) perovskite nanoparticles which has not been reported previously. This technique enables the synthesis of quantum confined nanostructures by precipitation from the colloidal mixture. The structural characterization of all the samples showed that the crystallization occurs in the orthorhombic phase for the pristine and copper substituted methyl ammonium lead bromide nanostructure. The samples prepared with the precursor stoichiometry of CH3NH3Pb0.6Cu0.4Br3 and CH3NH3Pb0.5Cu0.5Br3 exhibited improved crystallinity relative to the un-substituted perovskite material. We report that as Cu content increases the average crystalline size increases which leads to decrease in optical band gap. The change in Cu content did not alter the excitonic absorption indicating that the quality of the material was not compromised as a result of the Cu substitution.