Kinetics of cesium lead halide perovskite nanoparticle growth; focusing and de-focusing of size distribution

Abstract

In this work we study the kinetics of cesium lead halide perovskite nanoparticle (NP) growth; the focusing and de-focusing of the NP size distribution. Cesium lead halide perovskite NPs are considered to be attractive materials for optoelectronic applications. Understanding the kinetics of the formation of these all-inorganic perovskite NPs is critical for reproducibly and reliably generating large amounts of uniformly sized NPs. Here we investigate different growth durations for CsPbI₃ and CsPbBr₃ NPs, tracking their growth by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and size distribution analysis. As a result, we are able to provide a detailed model for the kinetics of their growth. It was observed that the CsPbI₃ NPs exhibit focusing of the size distribution in the first 20 seconds of growth, followed by de-focusing over longer growth durations, while the CsPbBr₃ NPs show de-focusing of the size distribution starting from the beginning of the growth. The monomer concentration is depleted faster in the case of CsPbBr₃ than in the case of CsPbI₃, due to faster diffusion of the monomers, which increases the critical radius and results in de-focusing of the population. Accordingly, focusing is not observed within 40 seconds of growth in the case of CsPbBr₃. This study provides important knowledge on how to achieve a narrow size distribution of cesium lead halide perovskite NPs when generating large amounts of these promising, highly luminescent NPs.