Remarkable photoluminescence enhancement of CsPbBr3 perovskite quantum dots assisted by metallic thin films

Abstract All-inorganic cesium lead halide perovskite quantum dots have recently received much attention as promising optoelectronic materials with great luminescent properties and bright application prospect in lighting, lasing, and photodetection. Although notable progress has been achieved in lighting applications based on such media, the performance could still be improved. Here, we demonstrate that the light emission from the perovskite QDs that possess high intrinsic luminous efficiency can be greatly enhanced by using metallic thin films, a technique that was usually considered only useful for improving the emission of materials with low intrinsic quantum efficiency. Eleven-fold maximal PL enhancement is observed with respect to the emission of perovskite QDs on the bare dielectric substrate. We explore this remarkable enhancement of the light emission originating from the joint effects of enhancing the incident photonic absorption of QDs at the excitation wavelength by means of the zero-order optical asymmetric Fabry–Perot-like thin film interference and increasing the radiative rate and quantum efficiency at the emission wavelength mediated by surface plasmon polaritons. We believe that our approach is also potentially valuable for the enhancement of light emission of other fluorescent media with high intrinsic quantum efficiency.