Shape-Directed Co-Assembly of Lead Halide Perovskite Nanocubes with Dielectric Nanodisks into Binary Nanocrystal Superlattices

Abstract

Self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) holds great promise in the multiscale engineering of solid-state materials, whereby atomically engineered NC building blocks are arranged into long-range ordered structures - superlattices (SLs) - with synergistic physical and chemical properties. Thus far, the reports have by far focused on single-component and binary systems of spherical NCs, yielding SLs isostructural with the known atomic lattices. Far greater structural space, beyond the realm of known lattices, is anticipated from combining NCs of various shapes. Here, we report on the co-assembly of steric-stabilized CsPbBr3 nanocubes (5.3 nm) with disk-shaped LaF3 NCs (9.2-28.4 nm in diameter, 1.6 nm in thickness) into binary SLs, yielding six columnar structures with AB, AB2, AB4, and AB6 stoichiometry, not observed before and in our reference experiments with NC systems comprising spheres and disks. This striking effect of the cubic shape is rationalized herein using packing-density calculations. Furthermore, in the systems with comparable dimensions of nanocubes (8.6 nm) and nanodisks (6.5 nm, 9.0 nm, 12.5 nm), other, noncolumnar structures are observed, such as ReO3-type SL, featuring intimate intermixing and face-to-face alignment of disks and cubes, face-centered cubic or simple cubic sublattice of nanocubes, and two or three disks per one lattice site. Lamellar and ReO3-type SLs, employing large 8.6 nm CsPbBr3 NCs, exhibit characteristic features of the collective ultrafast light emission - superfluorescence - originating from the coherent coupling of emission dipoles in the excited state.