Infrared-pump electronic-probe of methylammonium lead iodide reveals electronically decoupled organic and inorganic sublattices.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30696817.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-08363-2 and PMC identifier 6351559.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites such as methylammonium lead iodide (CH3NH3PbI3) are game-changing semiconductors for solar cells and light-emitting devices owing to their defect tolerance and exceptionally long carrier lifetimes and diffusion lengths. Determining whether the dynamically disordered organic cations with large dipole moment benefit the optoelectronic properties of CH3NH3PbI3 has been an outstanding challenge. Herein, via transient absorption measurements employing an infrared pump pulse tuned to a methylammonium vibration, we observe slow, nanosecond-long thermal dissipation from the selectively excited organic mode to the inorganic sublattice. The resulting transient electronic signatures, during the period of thermal-nonequilibrium when the induced thermal motions are mostly concentrated on the organic sublattice, reveal that the induced atomic motions of the organic cations do not alter the absorption or the photoluminescence response of CH3NH3PbI3, beyond thermal effects. Our results suggest that the attractive optoelectronic properties of CH3NH3PbI3 mainly derive from the inorganic lead-halide framework.