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Defect repairing in lead bromide perovskite single crystals with biasing and bromine for X-ray photon-counting detectors

Nature Materials volume 24, pages 1993–2000 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The benign defect nature of iodide perovskites has gained strong momentum in understanding and application in perovskite devices; however, the understanding of defects in bromide perovskites remains elusive. Here we demonstrate that the biasing of lead bromide perovskite crystals, which has been broadly deemed as detrimental to device performance, can efficiently repair bulk point defects in them. The biasing results in a significant bromide-vacancy reduction, starting from the cathode side and progressing to the anode side across the whole crystal. The vacancies can diffuse back after several weeks of storage. By introducing bromine in crystal growth, we permanently reduce the bromide-vacancy concentration by ~1,000 times, enhancing charge transport and stability in formamidinium lead bromide crystals. The optimized formamidinium lead bromide detector exhibited a very high detection performance including an energy resolution of 0.7% under 137Cs 662-keV γ-rays measured under room-temperature, high-performance iodine K-edge X-ray detection at low agent concentrations and dramatically improved radiation hardness.

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Fig. 1: Biasing-induced FAPbBr3 spectroscopic detector performance change.
Fig. 2: Identification of the type of defect drifting under an electric field.
Fig. 3: Br2 treatment to improve crystal quality and prevent the preconditioning process.
Fig. 4: Iodine K-edge X-ray spectra of FAPbBr3 detector.
Fig. 5: Radiation hardness evaluation of FAPbBr3 crystals.

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The main data supporting the findings of this study are available within the Article and the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number R01EB033439 and Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under award no. HDTRA1-20-2-0002. SEM and XPS measurements were performed in part at the Chapel Hill Analytical and Nanofabrication Laboratory (CHANL), a member of the North Carolina Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network (RTNN), which is supported by the National Science Foundation, grant number ECCS-2025064, as part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI). We thank Y. Yan at the University of Toledo and J. Li at MIT for fruitful discussions on the preconditioning mechanisms. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or DTRA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physical Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Mingze Li, Shaojie Wang, Allen Wood, Zhifang Shi, Jian Wang, Zhijun Li & Jinsong Huang

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Jason D. Yeager, Sergei P. Stepanoff, Jackson C. Adler & Douglas E. Wolfe

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Jinsong Huang

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Contributions

J.H. conceived the idea. M.L. and J.H. designed the experiments. M.L. synthesized the crystals, fabricated the devices and measured them. S.W. and A.W. conducted the mobility measurement and provided helpful suggestions about the preconditioning mechanism. Z.S. measured the transient photoluminescence mapping. J.D.Y., S.P.S., J.C.A. and D.E.W. helped with the radiation hardness test. J.W. contributed to the K-edge X-ray spectra measurement. Z.L. contributed to the crystal growth part. M.L. and J.H. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinsong Huang.

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The authors declare no competing interests. One provisional patent was filed based on the materials reported here. Patent application number 63/773,974; country, USA.

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Nature Materials thanks Leonardo Abbene and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

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Supplementary Figs. 1–34 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Li, M., Wang, S., Wood, A. et al. Defect repairing in lead bromide perovskite single crystals with biasing and bromine for X-ray photon-counting detectors. Nat. Mater. 24, 1993–2000 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02310-x

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