Influence of Bulky Organo-Ammonium Halide Additive Choice on the Flexibility and Efficiency of Perovskite Light-Emitting Devices

Perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) require small grain sizes to spatially confine charge carriers for efficient radiative recombination. As grain size decreases, passivation of surface defects becomes increasingly important. Additionally, polycrystalline perovskite films are highly brittle and mechanically fragile, limiting their practical applications in flexible electronics. In this work, the introduction of properly chosen bulky organo-ammonium halide additives is shown to be able to improve both optoelectronic and mechanical properties of perovskites, yielding highly efficient, robust, and flexible perovskite LEDs with external quantum efficiency of up to 13% and no degradation after bending for 10 000 cycles at a radius of 2 mm. Furthermore, insight of the improvements regarding molecular structure, size, and polarity at the atomic level is obtained with first-principles calculations, and design principles are provided to overcome trade-offs between optoelectronic and mechanical properties, thus increasing the scope for future highly efficient, robust, and flexible perovskite electronic device development.