Preparation of Lead and Lead-Free Metal Halides and their Performance in Photocatalysis

The last decade has witnessed a great deal of studies focused on chemically synthesized metal halide perovskites (MHP) nanocrystals (NCs), such as organic-inorganic hybrid and allinorganic perovskites.[1], [2] They exhibit high absorption cross section in the UV and visible [4] and they are emissive under light excitation. Their bandgap can be tuned not only with their chemical constitution, but also with their thickness, among others.

We will comment here on MH nanomaterials synthesized in our group, exhibiting different physical (size, dimension, thickness, …) and optical features (absorption and emission, or lack of emission), as well as their stability issues under ambient conditions, depending on their constituents.

Comparatively, lead-free metal halide materials, such as Cs3Sb2Br9 NCs, absorb in the UV and visible, but they are non-emissive under light excitation. We have recently demonstrated that both type of nanomaterials, lead- and lead-free MHPs, are of interest in photocatalysis, but exhibit different efficiency. [3], [4]

The different performance of the herein mentioned lead- and lead-free MHP in photocatalysis will be discussed.

References: [1] Schmidt L. C., Pertegás A., González-Carrero S., Malinkiewicz O., Agouram S., Mínguez Espallargas G., Bolink H. J., Galian R. E., Pérez-Prieto J. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136 , 850 —853; Rosa-Pardo, I….Galian, R.E., Pérez- Prieto, J. Nanoscale, 2022,14, 1160-1164. [2] Protesescu L., Yakunin S., … Kovalenko M. V. Nano Letters, 2015, 15, 3692–3696. [3] Rosa-Pardo I., Casadevall C., Schmidt L., Claros M., Galian R-E.,Lloret-Fillol J.,Pérez-Prieto J. Chem. Commun., 2019, 55, 2968-2971. [4] Rosa-Pardo I., Zhu,D., Cortés-Villena,A., Prato,M., De Trizio, L., Manna, L., Galian, R. E., Pérez-Prieto, J., ACS Energy Lett. 2023, 8, 6, 2789–2798.