Pressure-induced emission and remarkable piezochromism of two-dimensional cesium antimony bromide perovskites

There exist some perovskites materials with no photoluminescence (PL), which will greatly limit the practical applications in photodetection, display and lighting. Here, we achieve an exotic pressure-induced emission (PIE) at a mild pressure of 0.8 GPa from initially non-emissive 2D all-inorganic perovskite Cs3Sb2Br9 quantum dots, when the sample was subjected to external pressure. With the increase of pressure, the PL intensity gradually increases and the emission color transforms from red to green. Combined with subsequent experiments and computations, thus PIE behavior and piezochromism result from the SbBr6 octahedral distortion, accompanied by a structural phase transition from trigonal to monoclinic under pressure. Our work provides a robust strategy to boost the emission efficiency and to construct multi-functional PIE materials with piezochromism in environmentally friendly perovskites, thus facilitating the diverse applications in futural practices.