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Nano diffraction of ferroelastic domains at MAX IV

Photo of research facility at MAX IV.

An international team of researchers – consisting of no less than four from NanoLund – have used nano focused X-rays at the NanoMAX beamline to image the complex structure of metal halide perovskite nanowires. The high-resolution imaging made it possible to see domains inside the nanowire, as the temperature was increased across a structural phase transition. The structure of perovskite materials plays an important role in their properties for solar cells and light-emitting device applications.

For this study, the researchers produced the metal halide perovskite CsPbBr3 in the form of nanowires. It is a type of nanomaterial that is often considered in electronics and energy applications. The research team studied the effect of temperature on the structure of the material.

“We started measuring at room temperature, and we could observe structural inhomogeneities within the nanowire. This had not been observed with such high resolution using nano focused X-rays before, so that was already exciting. However, the domains did not have any special pattern,” says Lucas Marçal, post doc at NanoLund. “We gradually increased the temperature, and suddenly, at 80°C, the pattern changed to a highly ordered state.”

Read the article in full on MAX IV:s webpage

Publication (open access)

Lucas A. B. Marçal, Eitan Oksenberg, Dmitry Dzhigaev, Susanna Hammarberg, Amnon Rothman, Alexander Björling, Eva Unger, Anders Mikkelsen, Ernesto Joselevich, and Jesper Wallentin, In Situ Imaging of Ferroelastic Domain Dynamics in CsPbBr3 Perovskite Nanowires by Nanofocused Scanning X-ray Diffraction, ACS Nano 2020, published online October 19, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c07426