All-inorganic metal halide perovskites (ABX3, X = Cl,
Br, or I) show great potential for the fabrication of optoelectronic
devices, but the toxicity and instability of lead-based perovskites
limit their applications. Shell passivation with a more stable lead-free
perovskite is a promising strategy to isolate unstable components
from the environment as well as a feasible way to tune the optical
properties. However, it is challenging to grow core/shell perovskite
nanocrystals (NCs) due to the soft ionic nature of the perovskite
lattice. In this work, we developed a facile method to grow a lead-free
CsMnCl3 shell on the surface of CsPbCl3 NCs
to form CsPbCl3/CsMnCl3 core/shell NCs with
enhanced environmental stability and improved photoluminescence (PL)
quantum yields (QYs). More importantly, the resulting core/shell perovskite
NCs have color-tunable PL due to B-site ion diffusion at the interface
of the core/shell NCs. Specifically, B-site Mn diffusion from the
CsMnCl3 shell to the CsPbCl3 core leads to a
Mn-doped CsPbCl3 core (i.e., Mn:CsPbCl3), which
can turn on the Mn PL at around 600 nm. The ratio of Mn PL and host
CsPbCl3 PL is highly tunable as a function of the thermal
annealing time of the CsPbCl3/CsMnCl3 core/shell
NCs. While the halide anion exchange for all-inorganic metal halide
perovskites has been well-developed for band-gap-engineered materials,
interfacial B-site diffusion in core/shell perovskite NCs is a promising
approach for both tunable optical properties and enhanced environmental
stability.