Stretchable and self-healable organometal halide perovskite nanocrystal-embedded polymer gels with enhanced luminescence stability

Stretchable and self-healing polymer gels with luminescent property are very promising materials for next generation soft optical devices. This work presents the preparation of self-healing and luminescent polymer gels by simply blending organometal halide perovskite nanocrystals (OHP NCs) with poly(dimethylsiloxane)-urea copolymer (PDMS-urea). On the one hand, the obtained luminescent gels are not only flexible, stretchable and relatively transparent, they also exhibit excellent self-healing capability due to the reversible hydrogen bonding network in the PDMS-urea copolymer. On the other hand, the embedding of OHP NCs (MAPbBr₃ and MAPbI₃ NCs) inside the hydrophobic PDMS-urea gel greatly improved the photoluminescence stability of OHP NCs against water. Their applications as phosphors for LEDs have been demonstrated. Both the MAPbBr₃/PDMS-urea gel and MAPbI₃/PDMS-urea gel can fully convert the blue emission of GaN chip to green and red emissions, respectively. These gels can be used as photoluminescent materials in flexible optical devices with good self-healing capability.