Growth of Millimeter-sized 2D Metal Iodide Crystals Induced by Ion-specific Preference at Water-air Interfaces

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2024 Apr 12

PMID 38609368

Authors

Jingxian Zhong

Dawei Zhou

Qi Bai

Chao Liu

Xinlian Fan

Hehe Zhang

Congzhou Li

Ran Jiang

Peiyi Zhao

Jiaxiao Yuan

Xiaojiao Li

Guixiang Zhan

Hongyu Yang

Jing Liu

Xuefen Song

Junran Zhang

Xiao Huang

Chao Zhu

Chongqin Zhu

Lin Wang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Conventional liquid-phase methods lack precise control in synthesizing and processing materials with macroscopic sizes and atomic thicknesses. Water interfaces are ubiquitous and unique in catalyzing many chemical reactions. However, investigations on two-dimensional (2D) materials related to water interfaces remain limited. Here we report the growth of millimeter-sized 2D PbI single crystals at the water-air interface. The growth mechanism is based on an inherent ion-specific preference, i.e. iodine and lead ions tend to remain at the water-air interface and in bulk water, respectively. The spontaneous accumulation and in-plane arrangement within the 2D crystal of iodide ions at the water-air interface leads to the unique crystallization of PbI as well as other metal iodides. In particular, PbI crystals can be customized to specific thicknesses and further transformed into millimeter-sized mono- to few-layer perovskites. Additionally, we have developed water-based techniques, including water-soaking, spin-coating, water-etching, and water-flow-assisted transfer to recycle, thin, pattern, and position PbI, and subsequently, perovskites. Our water-interface mediated synthesis and processing methods represents a significant advancement in achieving simple, cost-effective, and energy-efficient production of functional materials and their integrated devices.

References

Wang L, Xu X, Zhang L, Qiao R, Wu M, Wang Z . Epitaxial growth of a 100-square-centimetre single-crystal hexagonal boron nitride monolayer on copper. Nature. 2019; 570(7759):91-95. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1226-z. View

Dodda A, Jayachandran D, Pannone A, Trainor N, Stepanoff S, Steves M . Active pixel sensor matrix based on monolayer MoS phototransistor array. Nat Mater. 2022; 21(12):1379-1387. DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01398-9. View

Lan C, Dong R, Zhou Z, Shu L, Li D, Yip S . Large-Scale Synthesis of Freestanding Layer-Structured PbI and MAPbI Nanosheets for High-Performance Photodetection. Adv Mater. 2017; 29(39). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201702759. View

Wan Z, Fang Y, Liu Z, Francisco J, Zhu C . Mechanistic Insights into the Reactive Uptake of Chlorine Nitrate at the Air-Water Interface. J Am Chem Soc. 2023; 145(2):944-952. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c09837. View

Li L, Chen Z, Hu Y, Wang X, Zhang T, Chen W . Single-layer single-crystalline SnSe nanosheets. J Am Chem Soc. 2013; 135(4):1213-6. DOI: 10.1021/ja3108017. View

Liu C, Xu X, Qiu L, Wu M, Qiao R, Wang L . Kinetic modulation of graphene growth by fluorine through spatially confined decomposition of metal fluorides. Nat Chem. 2019; 11(8):730-736. DOI: 10.1038/s41557-019-0290-1. View

Xu C, He P, Liu J, Cui A, Dong H, Zhen Y . A General Method for Growing Two-Dimensional Crystals of Organic Semiconductors by "Solution Epitaxy". Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2016; 55(33):9519-23. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201602781. View

Chen J, Tang W, Tian B, Liu B, Zhao X, Liu Y . Chemical Vapor Deposition of High-Quality Large-Sized MoS Crystals on Silicon Dioxide Substrates. Adv Sci (Weinh). 2016; 3(8):1500033. PMC: 5071677. DOI: 10.1002/advs.201600033. View

Liu J, Xue Y, Wang Z, Xu Z, Zheng C, Weber B . Two-Dimensional CH₃NH₃PbI₃ Perovskite: Synthesis and Optoelectronic Application. ACS Nano. 2016; 10(3):3536-42. DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b07791. View

10.

Zhang Y, Wang C, Deng Z . Colloidal synthesis of monolayer-thick formamidinium lead bromide perovskite nanosheets with a lateral size of micrometers. Chem Commun (Camb). 2018; 54(32):4021-4024. DOI: 10.1039/c8cc01466c. View

11.

Wan Y, Li E, Yu Z, Huang J, Li M, Chou A . Low-defect-density WS by hydroxide vapor phase deposition. Nat Commun. 2022; 13(1):4149. PMC: 9293887. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31886-0. View

12.

Liu X, Ha S, Zhang Q, de la Mata M, Magen C, Arbiol J . Whispering gallery mode lasing from hexagonal shaped layered lead iodide crystals. ACS Nano. 2015; 9(1):687-95. DOI: 10.1021/nn5061207. View

13.

van der Zande A, Huang P, Chenet D, Berkelbach T, You Y, Lee G . Grains and grain boundaries in highly crystalline monolayer molybdenum disulphide. Nat Mater. 2013; 12(6):554-61. DOI: 10.1038/nmat3633. View

14.

Flory N, Ma P, Salamin Y, Emboras A, Taniguchi T, Watanabe K . Waveguide-integrated van der Waals heterostructure photodetector at telecom wavelengths with high speed and high responsivity. Nat Nanotechnol. 2020; 15(2):118-124. PMC: 7025876. DOI: 10.1038/s41565-019-0602-z. View

15.

Shi J, Huan Y, Hong M, Xu R, Yang P, Zhang Z . Chemical Vapor Deposition Grown Large-Scale Atomically Thin Platinum Diselenide with Semimetal-Semiconductor Transition. ACS Nano. 2019; 13(7):8442-8451. DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b04312. View

16.

Sinha S, Zhu T, France-Lanord A, Sheng Y, Grossman J, Porfyrakis K . Atomic structure and defect dynamics of monolayer lead iodide nanodisks with epitaxial alignment on graphene. Nat Commun. 2020; 11(1):823. PMC: 7010709. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14481-z. View

17.

Pradhan B, Das S, Li J, Chowdhury F, Cherusseri J, Pandey D . Ultrasensitive and ultrathin phototransistors and photonic synapses using perovskite quantum dots grown from graphene lattice. Sci Adv. 2020; 6(7):eaay5225. PMC: 7015692. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay5225. View

18.

Sun Y, Zhou Z, Huang Z, Wu J, Zhou L, Cheng Y . Band Structure Engineering of Interfacial Semiconductors Based on Atomically Thin Lead Iodide Crystals. Adv Mater. 2019; 31(17):e1806562. DOI: 10.1002/adma.201806562. View

19.

Ye X, Jones M, Frechette L, Chen Q, Powers A, Ercius P . Single-particle mapping of nonequilibrium nanocrystal transformations. Science. 2016; 354(6314):874-877. DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4434. View

20.

Kusaka R, Nihonyanagi S, Tahara T . The photochemical reaction of phenol becomes ultrafast at the air-water interface. Nat Chem. 2021; 13(4):306-311. DOI: 10.1038/s41557-020-00619-5. View