Thiourea-Induced Cocrystallization of Mixed-Halide Perovskite Thin Films for High-Performance Pure Blue Perovskite Light Emitting Diodes

Metal halide perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) are gaining significant attention towards next-generation display materials owing to their advantageous properties, including color tunability, exceptionally narrow bandwidth, and high luminescence. Recent studies have successfully achieved over 20% external quantum efficiencies (EQE) in green and red PeLEDs. However, the blue PeLEDs lag far behind those of green or red PeLEDs because unstable phase stability in mixed halide perovskite thin films under high turn-on voltage (Von). In specific, the blue emission usually possesses halide ions with smaller ionic radius (Cl - or Br - ), which easily migrates under high operative bias generating significant halogen vacancies and phase-transformation. In this context, we suggest thiourea as a promising additive for stabilizing defective perovskite thin films. Thiourea is a well-known hydrogen bond donor to halogens, which allows potential coordination complex of thiourea-halide ions to encompass well-dispersed mixed halides in co-crystallized perovskite lattices. In addition, the strong coordination of the C=S···Pb 2+ was also demonstrated the thiourea-incorporated perovskite films, which effectively passivated undercoordinated Pb 2+ antisites. Consequently, the thiourea-incorporated perovskite films exhibited stable deep-blue emission within 460 nm, demonstrating excellent luminance and quantum efficiency in pure blue PeLEDs. Moreover, the addition of thiourea achieved decreased V on and excellent spectral stability of pure blue PeLEDs at high applied bias, leading to significant advancements in pure blue perovskite display technology.