Ce3+-Doping to Modulate Photoluminescence Kinetics for Efficient CsPbBr3 Nanocrystals Based Light-Emitting Diodes

Inorganic perovskite CsPbBr3 nanocrystals (NCs) are emerging, highly attractive light emitters with high color purity and good thermal stability for light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Their high photo/electroluminescence efficiencies are very important for fabricating efficient LEDs. Here, we propose a novel strategy to enhance the photo/electroluminescence efficiency of CsPbBr3 NCs through doping of heterovalent Ce3+ ions via a facile hot-injection method. The Ce3+ cation was chosen as the dopant for CsPbBr3 NCs by virtue of its similar ion radius and formation of higher energy level of conduction band with bromine in comparison with the Pb2+ cation to maintain the integrity of perovskite structure without introducing additional trap states. It was found that by increasing the doping amount of Ce3+ in CsPbBr3 NCs to 2.88% (atomic percentage of Ce compared to Pb) the photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of CsPbBr3 NCs reached up to 89%, a factor of 2 increase in comparison with the native, undoped ones. The ultrafast transient absorption and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy revealed that Ce3+-doping can significantly modulate the PL kinetics to enhance the PL efficiency of doped CsPbBr3 NCs. As a result, the LED device fabricated by adopting Ce3+-doped CsPbBr3 NCs as the emitting layers exhibited a pronounced improvement of electroluminescence with external quantum efficiency (EQE) from 1.6 to 4.4% via Ce3+-doping.