Researchers from Dr. Brian Korgel's research group, including Chemical Engineering graduate student Shea Sanvordenker, have managed to create tiny, brightly glowing crystals at room temperature, in normal air, in just two minutes. Perovskite materials are notoriously unstable and often quickly degrade when exposed to air or moisture, but these crystals keep their structure and brightness for over six months, making them very stable.
Called CsPbI₃ nanocrystals, they are traditionally created using high temperatures, inert airs, and multiple purification steps, and can take anywhere from tens of minutes to several hours. The new technique, using a simpler chemical process at room temperature in the open air, is a much faster and simpler process than conventional approaches. The resulting crystals are about 40 nanometers wide (smaller than a human hair) and produce a strong red light and convert energy into light extremely efficiently.
Now that these crystals can be produced quickly and in abundance, they can be used to further explore their use in scientific and technological applications.
For this paper, Dr. Korgel, an affiliated faculty member of TMI and professor in Chemical Engineering, worked with both Sanvordenker and Thana Shuga Aldeen, an Assistant Professor of Solid State Physics at Sana'a University in Yemen.
Read more of their work at "Rapid Synthesis of Fluorescent Perovskite CsPbI3 Nanocrystals in Open Air at Room Temperature" in The Journal of Physical Chemistry.
