Electronic properties of individual CsPbI2Br nanocrystals investigated by LT-STM

Solution-processed metal halide perovskite nanocrystals show promise for various potential optoelectronic applications and the exploration of the fundamental physics underlying them. However, the electronic properties of individual nanocrystals have not been thoroughly studied. Here, we applied low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy to investigate the properties of metal halide perovskite CsPbI₂Br nanocrystals with a diameter in the range of 10–20 nm. Sub-monolayer dispersions of the nanocrystal on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and gold thin film substrates were achieved. Using scanning tunneling microscopy, we resolved topographies of individual nanocrystals on the gold film, and their electronic properties were probed by scanning tunneling spectroscopy. In our experiment, no obvious dependence of the extracted energy gap on the nanocrystal size and shape was found, which is consistent with the reported small exciton Bohr radius in metal halide perovskite materials. Additionally, we observed that the energy gaps of some nanocrystals are smaller than that of the bulk, suggesting the influence of factors such as deep-level defects/traps, ion migration, etc. on the electronic structure.