Single crystal hybrid perovskite field-effect transistors

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 5354 - 10
• Main Authors: Yu, Weili, Li, Feng, Yu, Liyang, Niazi, Muhammad R., Zou, Yuting, Corzo, Daniel, Basu, Aniruddha, Ma, Chun, Dey, Sukumar, Tietze, Max L., Buttner, Ulrich, Wang, Xianbin, Wang, Zhihong, Hedhili, Mohamed N., Guo, Chunlei, Wu, Tom, Amassian, Aram
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 17.12.2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 140/125; 140/146; 147/135; 147/3; 639/166/987; 639/301/1005/1007; 639/638/298/917; Contamination; Crystal defects; Crystallization; Crystals; Field effect transistors; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lead; Light emission; multidisciplinary; Perovskites; Photovoltaic cells; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Semiconductor devices; Single crystals; Solar cells; Surface roughness; Temperature distribution; Transistors
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07706-9

The fields of photovoltaics, photodetection and light emission have seen tremendous activity in recent years with the advent of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. Yet, there have been far fewer reports of perovskite-based field-effect transistors. The lateral and interfacial transport requirements of transistors make them particularly vulnerable to surface contamination and defects rife in polycrystalline films and bulk single crystals. Here, we demonstrate a spatially-confined inverse temperature crystallization strategy which synthesizes micrometre-thin single crystals of methylammonium lead halide perovskites MAPbX 3 (X = Cl, Br, I) with sub-nanometer surface roughness and very low surface contamination. These benefit the integration of MAPbX 3 crystals into ambipolar transistors and yield record, room-temperature field-effect mobility up to 4.7 and 1.5 cm 2  V −1  s −1 in p and n channel devices respectively, with 10 4 to 10 5 on-off ratio and low turn-on voltages. This work paves the way for integrating hybrid perovskite crystals into printed, flexible and transparent electronics. The methylammonium lead halide perovskites have shown excellent optoelectronic properties but the field-effect transistors are much less studied. Here Yu et al. synthesize micrometer-thin crystals of perovskites with low surface contamination and make ambipolar transistor devices with high mobilities.