Ethanol-Precipitable, Silica-Passivated Perovskite Nanocrystals Incorporated into Polystyrene Microspheres for Long-Term Storage and Reusage.

Perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs) are emerging luminescent materials due to their fascinating physic-optical properties. However, their sensitive surface chemistry with organic polar solvents, oxygen, and moisture greatly hinders their developments towards practical applications. Herein we promote silica-passivated PNCs (SP-PNCs) by in situ hydrolyzing the surface ligands of (3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane. The resultant SP-PNCs possesses a high quantum yield (QY) of 80 % and are precipitable by polar solvents, such as ethanol and acetone, without destroying their surface chemistry or losing QY, which offers an eco-friendly and efficient method for separation, purification, and phase transfer of PNCs. Moreover, we further promoted a swelling-deswelling encapsulation process to incorporate the as-made SP-PNCs into non-crosslinked polystyrene microspheres (PMs), which can largely increase the stability of the SP-PNCs against moisture for long-term storage.