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Simultaneously achieving both broad absorption and sharp emission in the near-infrared (NIR) is challenging. Coupling of an efficient absorber such as lead halide perovskites to lanthanide emissive species is a promising way to meet the demands for visible to NIR spectral conversion. However, lead based perovskite sensitizers suffer from relatively narrow absorption in the visible range, poor stability, and toxicity. Herein, we introduce a downshifting configuration based on lead-free cesium manganese bromide nanocrystals acting as broad visible absorbers coupled to sharp emission in the NIR-I and NIR-II spectral regions. To achieve this, we synthesized CsMnBr3 and Cs3MnBr5 nanocrystals and attempted to dope them with a series of lanthanides, achieving success only with CsMnBr3. The correlation of the lanthanide emission to the CsMnBr3 visible absorption was confirmed with steady-state excitation spectra and time-resolved photoluminescence measurements, whereas the mechanism of downconversion from the CsMnBr3 matrix to the lanthanides was understood by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This study shows that lead-free metal halides with an appropriate phase are an effective sensitizer for lanthanides and a route to efficient downshifting applications.

Light-emitting diodes based on perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs-LEDs) have gained great interest for next-generation display and lighting technologies prized for their color purity, high brightness and luminous efficiency approaching the intrinsic limit imposed by extraction of electroluminescence from the device structure. Although the time is ripe for the development of effective light outcoupling strategies to further boost the device performance, this technologically relevant aspect of PNC-LEDs is still without a definitive solution. Here, following theoretical guidelines and without the integration of complex photonic structures, we realize stable PNC-LEDs with EQE as high as 29.2% (average EQE=24.7%), which substantially break the outcoupling limit of common PNC-LEDs and systematically surpass any previous perovskite-based device. Key to such unprecedented performance is channeling the recombination zone in PNC emissive layers as thin as 10 nm, which we achieve by finely balancing the electron and hole transport using CsPbBr3 PNCs resurfaced with a nickel oxide layer. The ultra-thin approach general and, in principle, applicable to other perovskite nanostructures for fabricating highly efficient, color tunable transparent LEDs ideal for unobtrusive screens and displays and is compatible with the integration of photonic components for further enhanced performance.