Perovskites are a class of compounds with the general formula ABX₃ and becoming increasingly attractive recently. Because this kind of material possesses various advantages such as abundant raw materials, easy synthesis, excellent photoelectric properties, and short production process. As one of the applications for lead-based perovskites, the perovskite solar cells have quickly enhanced their PCE from 3.8% in 2009 to over 25% within a short period. However, the problems, such as instability of the ionic crystal nature and toxicity of lead, largely hinder the lead-based perovskites towards commercialization. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new lead-free materials as alternative to lead-based perovskites, where similar structures can be formed to inherit the excellent optoelectronic properties. Moreover, new properties can be achieved due to more abundant metal candidates in lead-free materials. Based on this, we develop different kinds of perovskite-structure-like lead-free materials such as organic inorganic hybrid materials, chiral materials and double perovskites. In addition to physical and chemical properties like photoluminescence, absorption, structure, etc., we further demonstrate their potential applications according to their unique properties such as multicolor light emission.

We incorporate chiral MBA (methylbenzylamine) in inorganic metal system to obtain chiral lead-free organic inorganic hybrid materials, where significant crystallization difference is observed between rac and chiral halide compounds for the first time. Such difference is confirmed by spectrum and structural results. What’s more, we find that moisture can cause the structural transfer in chiral compounds, attributed to the asymmetric hydrogen bonding of chiral compounds. Our achievements open up new chance to improve our material property and provide new horizon for synthesis of chiral materials in the future.

Then, we obtained blue emission center in Mn-based organic and inorganic compounds by choosing organic molecule MBA. The method has basic difference with the emissions in Mn based compounds. The coexisting two emission centers of our Mn based samples is verified by spectral results. Because two emission centers can induce different PL excitation responses, so that the excitation wavelengths are capable of manipulating the emission color. Specifically, we achieve CIE coordinates of (0.33, 0.35) with a white emission. The potential of our materials in anti-counterfeiting and multicolor lighting technology are further demonstrated. Our accomplishments explore a new approach for multicolor emission in Mn based materials.

We finally obtained Sb³⁺/Cu⁺ co-doped Cs₂NaInCl₆ (CNIC) double perovskite by hydrothermal reaction which exhibits tunable dual emissions with PL quantum efficiency (PLQE) of 78%. Depending on different photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectra between two emissions, multiple emission colors can be got by manipulating excitation wavelength. Interestingly, emission color gamut can be further tuned through manipulating the feeding ratio of Cu^I dopant, where warm color and cool color can be achieved separately. We further illustrated the application potential of our co-doped materials in the fileds of multicolor lighting devices and anti-counterfeiting. Our achievements open up a brand-new strategy for wider spectral luminescence of double perovskites and pace up the road for a series of new applications.