Cheng Zhu is a 4th-year Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate in the Prof. Peidong Yang’s group. He is a member of the perovskite subgroup, and he is the lab radiation safety officer. Before entering the Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley, Cheng received his B. E. in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. In his spare time, he loves to play sports and experiment with new potentially delicious recipes.
Cheng Zhu’s research is focused on designing and probing new metal halide perovskite structures with manipulation, assembly, and study of the [MX6]n- building blocks. In recent work, Cheng et al. developed a crown ether-assisted supramolecular assembly strategy to stabilize emissive [M(IV)X6]2- (M = tetravalent metal cation, X = halide anion) octahedral centers into a solid extended network. Alkali metal-bound crown ethers (crown ether@A) can assemble seven different [M(IV)X6]2- into a unique charge-neutral dumbbell-shaped cluster with the formula (crown ether@A)2M(IV)X6 in solution. Single crystals with diverse packing geometries and symmetries from the solid assembly of this new supramolecular building block via a facile anti-solvent crystallization method. Based on the excellent chemical and structural tunability revealed in previous research, it is now possible to further apply this supramolecular assembly strategy to design novel halide perovskites materials with superior light emitting and carrier transport properties. For example, it would be very interesting to investigate if the supramolecular approach can enhance the air stability or emission intensity of perovskite octahedra. Furthermore, the success of the solution-phase assembly of octahedral units now warrants simultaneous assembly of multivariant [MX6]n- octahedra. Efficient broadband and white light emitters can be achieved.