Modifying Halide Perovskites Using Charged Particle Beams

Halide perovskites have attracted great attention in the fields of photonics and optoelectronics, as they possess superb semiconducting properties combined with ease of fabrication and cost efficiency. As a result of their success, in recent years, irradiation of these materials with focused beams of charged particles, such as electrons, protons, and ions, has been extensively used for the modification and fabrication of functional devices. This review summarizes a decade of research on the irradiation of perovskites, highlighting their differences and similarities in their processing with traditional semiconductors. Halide perovskites have shown remarkable resistance to irradiation-induced defects, enabling device micro- and nanofabrication through focused ion beam patterning. At the same time, controlled defect formation can be exploited to modify the device properties by widely available electron beams. The present review discusses the charged particle beam instrumentation and semiconductor–particle interactions and lays the groundwork for further halide perovskite device manufacturing by charged particle beams.