Aqueous Synthesis of Low-Dimensional Lead Halide Perovskites for Room-Temperature Circularly Polarized Light Emission and Detection

Low-dimensional lead halide perovskite materials are an emerging class of solution-processable semiconductors with promising potential applications in optoelectronic devices. Unfortunately, it is impossible to synthesize high-crystalline-quality low-dimensional perovskite single crystals without using chemotoxic solutions such as dimethylformamide/dimethyl sulfoxide or applying heating. Herein we report an economical and universal aqueous method to synthesize 2D layered and 1D chain perovskite single crystals at room temperature. The resultant chiral 2D perovskites can efficiently and selectively emit and detect circularly polarized light at room temperature. The as-synthesized 1D perovskite single crystals exhibit strong quantum confinement and enhanced self-trapped states that give efficient warm circularly polarized white-light emission. This aqueous synthetic method is general for other high-quality low dimensional lead halide perovskite single crystals, and thus our findings would motivate more fundamental investigations on low-dimensional perovskites for potential optoelectronic applications.