Cation Engineering of Cu-Doped CsPbI3: Lead Substitution and Dimensional Reduction for Improved Scintillation Performance

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that Cu doping in CsPbI3 perovskites reduces lead toxicity, enhances scintillation properties, and maintains stable emission, offering a promising lead-free alternative for luminescent applications.

Contribution

Introduces Cu doping in CsPbI3 to partially substitute lead, improving scintillation performance and reducing toxicity with minimal temperature dependence.

Findings

Increased light yield to 3.0 photons/keV after doping

Achieved fast decay time of ~0.6 ns

Maintained stable emission around 713 nm across temperatures

Abstract

To date, inorganic halide perovskite nanocrystals show promising contributions in emerging luminescent materials due to their high tolerance to defects. In particular, the development of cesium lead iodide (CsPbI3) has shown its efficiency for light-harvesting properties. However, further implementation is hindered due to the toxicity of the lead content. Therefore, in this study, we introduced Cu atoms to partially substitute Pb atoms (5% Cu) in the CsPbI3 lattice as a solution to reduce Pb toxicity. A partial lead material is substituted using Cu displays a larger Stokes shift (-67 nm) compared to the pristine, and resulted doped CsPbI3 not undergo the undesired self absorption. An outcome is focused on the champion of fast-component (tau_1) decay time ~0.6 ns. Temperature-dependent radioluminescence outlines an incremental change in the emission intensity is marginally centered at 713 +- 16 nm, which indicates Cu-doped CsPbI3 is not greatly affected by temperature. In addition, we report that the light yield (LY) pristine CsPbI3 after doping is increased to 3.0 +- 0.8 photons/keV. Our work provides physical insights into a tunable scintillation property using transition metal doping toward lead-free based scintillating perovskites.