With nearly 20% of global electricity consumed by lighting, more efficient illumination sources can enable massive energy savings. However, effectively creating the high-quality white light required for indoor illumination remains a challenge. To accurately represent color, the illumination source must provide photons with all the energies visible to our eye. Such a broad emission is difficult to achieve from a single material. In commercial white-light sources, one or more light-emitting diodes, coated by one or more phosphors, yield a combined emission that appears white. However, combining emitters leads to changes in the emission color over time due to the unequal degradation rates of the emitters and efficiency losses due to overlapping absorption and emission energies of the different components. A single material that emits broadband white light (a continuous emission spanning 400-700 nm) would obviate these problems. In 2014, we described broadband white-light emission upon near-UV excitation from three new layered perovskites. To date, nine white-light-emitting perovskites have been reported by us and others, making this a burgeoning field of study. This Account outlines our work on understanding how a bulk material, with no obvious emissive sites, can emit every color of the visible spectrum. Although the initial discoveries were fortuitous, our understanding of the emission mechanism and identification of structural parameters that correlate with the broad emission have now positioned us to design white-light emitters. Layered hybrid halide perovskites feature anionic layers of corner-sharing metal-halide octahedra partitioned by organic cations. The narrow, room-temperature photoluminescence of lead-halide perovskites has been studied for several decades, and attributed to the radiative recombination of free excitons (excited electron-hole pairs). We proposed that the broad white emission we observed primarily stems from exciton self-trapping. Here, the exciton couples strongly to the lattice, creating transient elastic lattice distortions that can be viewed as "excited-state defects". These deformations stabilize the exciton affording a broad emission with a large Stokes shift. Although material defects very likely contribute to the emission width, our mechanistic studies suggest that the emission mostly arises from the bulk material. Ultrafast spectroscopic measurements support self-trapping, with new, transient, electronic states appearing upon photoexcitation. Importantly, the broad emission appears common to layered Pb-Br and Pb-Cl perovskites, albeit with a strong temperature dependence. Although the emission is attributed to light-induced defects, it still reflects changes in the crystal structure. We find that greater out-of-plane octahedral tilting increases the propensity for the broad emission, enabling synthetic control over the broad emission. Many of these perovskites have color rendering abilities that exceed commercial requirements and mixing halides affords both "warm" and "cold" whit...

We present synthetic design rules for achieving and optimizing broadband emission from layered halide perovskites.

Layered halide perovskites offer a versatile platform for manipulating light through synthetic design. Although most layered perovskites absorb strongly in the ultraviolet (UV) or near-UV region, their emission can range from the UV to the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. This emission can be very narrow, displaying high color purity, or it can be extremely broad, spanning the entire visible spectrum and providing high color rendition (or accurately reproducing illuminated colors). The origin of the photoluminescence can vary enormously. Strongly correlated electron−hole pairs, permanent lattice defects, transient light-induced defects, and ligand-field transitions in the inorganic layers and molecular chromophores in the organic layers can be involved in the emission mechanism. In this review, we highlight the different types of photoluminescence that may be attained from layered halide perovskites, with an emphasis on how the emission may be systematically tuned through changes to the bulk crystalline lattice: changes in composition, structure, and dimensionality.

The recently discovered phenomenon of broadband white-light emission at room temperature in the (110) two-dimensional organic-inorganic perovskite (N-MEDA)[PbBr4] (N-MEDA = N(1)-methylethane-1,2-diammonium) is promising for applications in solid-state lighting. However, the spectral broadening mechanism and, in particular, the processes and dynamics associated with the emissive species are still unclear. Herein, we apply a suite of ultrafast spectroscopic probes to measure the primary events directly following photoexcitation, which allows us to resolve the evolution of light-induced emissive states associated with white-light emission at femtosecond resolution. Terahertz spectra show fast free carrier trapping and transient absorption spectra show the formation of self-trapped excitons on femtosecond time-scales. Emission-wavelength-dependent dynamics of the self-trapped exciton luminescence are observed, indicative of an energy distribution of photogenerated emissive states in the perovskite. Our results are consistent with photogenerated carriers self-trapped in a deformable lattice due to strong electron-phonon coupling, where permanent lattice defects and correlated self-trapped states lend further inhomogeneity to the excited-state potential energy surface.

We investigate the consequences of dimensional confinement on halide double perovskites by synthesizing two-dimensional analogues of the recently reported three-dimensional double perovskite CsAgBiBr. The layered perovskites (BA)AgBiBr (1) and (BA)CsAgBiBr (2) (BA = CH(CH)NH) feature metal-halide sheets of mono and bilayer thickness, respectively, where the ordered double-perovskite lattice is partitioned by organic cations. Electronic structure calculations indicate that the indirect bandgap of CsAgBiBr becomes direct when the infinitely thick inorganic lattice is reduced to monolayer thickness. Calculations on model systems allow us to separate the effects of dimensional reduction from those of the accompanying structural distortions in the inorganic sublattice. Detailed optical characterization shows that the photophysical properties of 1 and 2 are markedly different than those of their well-studied lead-halide analogs. Hybrid layered derivatives of double perovskites substantially expand on the substitutional flexibility of halide perovskites to encompass greater compositional and electronic diversity.

Absorption of light in hybrid perovskite solar cells leads to ultrafast large-amplitude deformations of the inorganic sublattice.

We show that post-synthetic small-molecule intercalation can significantly reduce the electronic confinement of 2D hybrid perovskites.

The two-dimensional congeners of the well-known three-dimensional perovskites display new properties enabled by their reduced dimensionality. Here, organic molecules separate inorganic sheets, affording the properties of both discrete molecules and extended solids in single, well-defined materials. The choice of organic and inorganic components engenders a large range of structural motifs, which yield diverse properties such as electroluminescence, white-light emission, photoconductivity, porosity, and reactivity. Layered halide perovskites have been known for decades. Their recent resurgence compels us to understand the fundamental studies that set the stage for their current technological relevance. We are not providing a comprehensive review of this vast and rapidly growing field. Instead, we highlight some of the discoveries that have directed current research in this field. We hope to introduce new researchers to layered halide perovskites to bring fresh perspectives to study this venerable family of materials that continue to surprise us today.