Ether-Soluble Cu53 Nanoclusters as an Effective Precursor of High-Quality CuI Films for Optoelectronic Applications.

An effective strategy is developed to synthesize high-nuclearity Cu clusters, [Cu53 (RCOO)10 (C≡CtBu)20 Cl2 H18 ]+ (Cu53 ), which is the largest CuI /Cu0 cluster reported to date. Cu powder and Ph2 SiH2 are employed as the reducing agents in the synthesis. As revealed by single-crystal diffraction, Cu53 is arranged as a four-concentric-shell Cu3 @Cu10 Cl2 @Cu20 @Cu20 structure, possessing an atomic arrangement of concentric M12 icosahedral and M20 dodecahedral shells which popularly occurs in Au/Ag nanoclusters. Surprisingly, Cu53 can be dissolved in diethyl ether and spin coated to form uniform nanoclusters film on organolead halide perovskite. The cluster film can subsequently be converted into high-quality CuI film via in situ iodination at room temperature. The as-fabricated CuI film is an excellent hole-transport layer for fabricating highly stable CuI-based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with 14.3 % of efficiency.