Abstract
Although edges and defects constitute only a small fraction of crystalline materials, they exert an outsized impact on a material′s properties. Organic–inorganic halide perovskites are promising next-generation semiconductor materials with superior cost effectiveness and interesting optoelectronic properties1,2,3. However, clear images of their edges have remained challenging to obtain owing to their extreme sensitivity4,5. Using truly high-speed ultralow-dose four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy with dose fractionation, we perform ptychography at, to our knowledge, the lowest-dose atomic resolution to date, revealing not only the detailed atomic structure of the edges of a halide perovskite but also their structural dynamics. A majority methylammonium (MA) and iodine (I) edge termination is observed in methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3), and the damage rate of its edges and internal defects is found to depend on the concentration and type of vacancies present, with a preponderance of I vacancies in particular correlating with higher rates of damage.
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Data availability
The data used to produce the plots within this paper are available at Zenodo41 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11482207) or from the corresponding authors.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program via grant agreement no. 802123-HDEM (T.J.P.) and Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) Project G013122N ‘Advancing 4D-STEM for atomic scale structure property correlation in 2D materials’. Z.W. and Y.Y. acknowledge the funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52222311), and the support from the centre for High-resolution Electron Microscopy at ShanghaiTech University. S.Z. and L.D. acknowledge the support from the US Department of Energy, office of Basic Energy Sciences under award number DE-SC0022082 (Materials Chemistry program). B.Y. and Y.H. acknowledge the financial support from the GJYC program of Guangzhou City for this research, and the funding from Guangdong Innovative and Entrepreneurial Research Team Program (2023ZT10C139). S.Z. acknowledges the support from Fundamental research funds for the central universities (KY2060000246) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (GG2060007011).
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B.Y. and T.J.P. conceived the project and designed the experiments, which B.Y. carried out and analysed. B.Y., Z.W., X.W. and Y.Y. performed iterative ptychography. S.Z. and L.D. synthesized the perovskite. C.H. and C.G. helped with the 4D-STEM data acquisition and processing. T.C. and H.S. helped with the simulations. B.Y. and T.J.P. wrote the manuscript. Y.H. assisted in editing the paper. All of the authors read and reviewed the paper.
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Yuan, B., Wang, Z., Zhang, S. et al. Atomically resolved edges and defects in lead halide perovskites. Nature 647, 364–368 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09693-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09693-6
