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Mechanochemically-induced glass formation from two-dimensional hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites.

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Peer-reviewed

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Abstract

Hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs) occupy a prominent position in the field of materials chemistry due to their attractive optoelectronic properties. While extensive work has been done on the crystalline materials over the past decades, the newly reported glasses formed from HOIPs open up a new avenue for perovskite research with their unique structures and functionalities. Melt-quenching is the predominant route to glass formation; however, the absence of a stable liquid state prior to thermal decomposition precludes this method for most HOIPs. In this work, we describe the first mechanochemically-induced crystal-glass transformation of HOIPs as a rapid, green and efficient approach for producing glasses. The amorphous phase was formed from the crystalline phase within 10 minutes of ball-milling, and exhibited glass transition behaviour as evidenced by thermal analysis techniques. Time-resolved in situ ball-milling with synchrotron powder diffraction was employed to study the microstructural evolution of amorphisation, which showed that the crystallite size reaches a comminution limit before the amorphisation process is complete, indicating that energy may be further accumulated as crystal defects. Total scattering experiments revealed the limited short-range order of amorphous HOIPs, and their optical properties were studied by ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy.

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Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank funding and support from St Edmund's College (C. Y.), the Royal Society for a university research fellowship, URF\R\211013 (T. D. B), Leverhulme Trust for a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2019) (T. D. B. and L. N. M.), University of Liverpool (L. N. M.), the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability (S. E. D.), the Cambridge Trusts and EPSRC Cambridge NanoDTC, EP/S022953/1 (C. C.), EPSRC scholarship, EP/R513180/1 (L. A. V. N.-C.), the Leverhulme Trust for a Research Project Grant, RPG-2020-005 (C. C. B. and T. D. B.), the Croatian Science Foundation, IP-2020-02-4702 (V. M., I. B., B. K. and K. U.), the Royal Society and Tata Group, UF150033 (S. D. S.), and the EPSRC, EP/V027131/1. (S. D. S. and W. X.). The authors acknowledge DESY (Hamburg, Germany), a member of the Helmholtz Association HGF, for the provision of experimental facilities (proposal I-20221330 EC). Parts of this research were carried out at PETRA III and we would like to thank Martin Etter and Volodymyr Baran for assistance in using beamline P02.1. We extend our gratitude to Diamond Light Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom, for the provision of synchrotron access to Beamline I15-1. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

Keywords

3403 Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry, 34 Chemical Sciences, 3406 Physical Chemistry

Journal Title

Chem Sci

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-6520
2041-6539

Volume Title

Publisher

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/S022953/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/V027131/1)