Optical Cooling of Dot-in-Crystal Halide Perovskites: Challenges of Nonlinear Exciton Recombination

Highly efficient anti-Stokes (AS) photoluminescence (PL) is observed from halide perovskite quantum dots (QDs) due to their strong electron-phonon interactions. The AS PL is particularly intriguing, as it suggests the potential for semiconductor optical cooling if the external quantum efficiency approaches 100%. However, the PL quantum efficiency in QDs is primarily dominated by multiparticle nonradiative Auger recombination processes under intense photoexcitation, which impose limits on the optical cooling gain. Here, we investigate the Auger recombination of dot-in-crystal perovskites. We quantitatively estimate the maximum optical cooling gain and the corresponding excitation intensity. We further conducted optical cooling experiments and demonstrate a maximum photocooling of approximately 9 K from room temperature. Additionally, we confirmed that increasing the excitation intensity leads to a transition from photocooling to photoheating. These observations are consistent with our time-resolved measurements, offering insights into the potential and limitations of optical cooling in semiconductor QDs.