Proteinogenic Amino Acid Assisted Preparation of Highly Luminescent Hybrid Perovskite Nanoparticles

Versatile approaches to nanoparticle synthesis offer unprecedented opportunities for the development of optoelectronics, photonics, and biosciences. With the current advancement of hybrid organic–inorganic metal halide perovskites, the next step is to expand their field of applications via utilization of functional and modifiable ligand chemistry. Here, we present a ligand assisted reprecipitation approach for highly luminescent perovskite nanoparticle synthesis using for the first time l-lysine and l-arginine for surface passivation. These nanoparticles exhibit emission within a narrow bandwidth of the visible spectrum and photoluminescence quantum yield close to 100%. Additionally, preferential ligand orientation is achieved via amino acids α-amino group blocking which results in blue-shifted emission as well as smaller and more uniform particle size. These experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of naturally occurring proteinogenic amino acids as surface ligands and offer possibilities for versatile modification of perovskite nanoparticle properties via well-studied amino acid chemistry.