Tönu Pullerits

All-inorganic halide perovskite nanowires (NWs) exhibit improved thermal and hydrolysis stability and could thus play a vital role in nanoscale optoelectronics. Among them, blue-light-based devices are extremely limited because of the lack of a facile method to obtain high-purity CsPbCl3 NWs. Herein, we report a direct and facile method for the synthesis of CsPbCl3 NWs assisted by inorganic ions that served both as a morphology controlling agent for the anisotropic growth of nanomaterials and a surface passivation species modulating the surface of nanomaterials. This new approach allows us to obtain high-purity and size-uniform NWs as long as 500 nm in length and 20 nm in diameter with high reproducibility. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ultrafast spectroscopic measurements confirmed that a reduced band gap caused by the surface species of NWs relative to nanocubes (NCs) was achieved at the photon energy of 160 eV because of the hybrid surface passivation contributed by adsorbed inorganic ions. The resulting NWs demonstrate significantly enhanced photoelectrochemical performances, 3.5-fold increase in the photocurrent generation, and notably improved stability compared to their NC counterparts. Our results suggest that the newly designed NWs could be a promising material for the development of nanoscale optoelectronic devices.