Few-Nanometer-Sized α-CsPbI3 Quantum Dots Enabled by Strontium Substitution and Iodide Passivation for Efficient Red-Light Emitting Diodes

Cubic phase CsPbI3 quantum dots (α-CsPbI3 QDs) as a newly emerging type of semiconducting QDs hold tremendous promise for fundamental research and optoelectronic device applications. However, stable and sub-5 nm-sized α-CsPbI3 QDs have rarely been demonstrated so far due to their highly labile ionic structure and low phase stability. Here, we report a novel strontium-substitution along with iodide passivation strategy to stabilize the cubic phase of CsPbI3, achieving the facile synthesis of α-CsPbI3 QDs with a series of controllable sizes down to sub-5 nm. We demonstrate that the incorporation of strontium ions can significantly increase the formation energies of α-CsPbI3 QDs and hence reduce the structure distortion to stabilize the cubic phase at the few-nanometer size. The size ranging from 15 down to sub-5 nm of as-prepared stable α-CsPbI3 QDs allowed us to investigate their unique size-dependent optical properties. Strikingly, the few-nanometer-sized α-CsPbI3 QDs turned out to retain high photoluminescence and highly close packing in solid state thin films, and the fabricated red light emitting diodes exhibited high brightness (1250 cd m–2 at 9.2 V) and good operational stability (L50 > 2 h driven by 6 V). The developed cation-substitution strategy will provide an alternative method to prepare uniform and finely size-controlled colloidal lead halide perovskite QDs for various optoelectronic applications.