Facile and Composition-Flexible Alternate Route to Perovskites

Halide perovskites have emerged as promising candidates for a variety of applications, including solar cells and light emitting diodes. In the field of photovoltaics, power conversion efficiencies have risen rapidly and competitively over the past several years, although environmental stability remains a focus of study. Herein we report a method for synthesizing a variety of phase pure perovskites through a simple solution method followed by mild thermolysis. Our group has previously successfully demonstrated synthesis of metal chalcogenide semiconductors as well as nanocomposites of polymers with metal chalcogenide semiconductor quantum dots, through the use of organometallic single source precursors. The approach allows access to compositions across the periodic table, including those from Groups 13-15, 14-16, and 12-16. Following on from this work, we turned our approach to perovskite materials. In this study, we demonstrate synthesis of the all-inorganic lead-free perovskites A₂SnX₆, with A=Cs, Rb, K, and X=Cl, Br, I.