Publication date: 15th December 2025
Crystals are defined as solids that display three-dimensional atomic-scale order and produce sharp X-ray diffraction at wide angles. By this definition, colloidal nanocrystal superlattices are not considered true crystals, because cumulative disorder disrupts the atomic periodicity across particles and prevents wide-angle supercrystal diffraction. Thus, superlattices are considered semi-ordered aggregates of nanocrystals, each treated as an independent entity and assumed to remain unaffected by self-assembly. Challenging this assumption, here we show that CsPbBr3 superlattices meet the formal definition of crystals, and can be isolated and measured in a single-supercrystal diffraction experiment. This analysis revealed striking similarities with protein crystals, whose building blocks are comparable in size and complexity to nanoparticles. Like proteins, CsPbBr3 nanocrystals undergo conformational changes upon self-assembly, leading to a measurable lattice contraction and a formal transition to cubic supersymmetry. Like proteins, nanocrystals occupy just 50% of the supercrystal volume, with ligands in the remaining space self-organizing in patterns comparable to structural and interstitial water molecules. Like proteins, the nanocrystal electron density can be reconstructed from single-supercrystal X-ray diffraction, using strategies inspired by structural biology. This evidence prompts a rethinking of superlattices as true crystals of hybrid organic-inorganic phases, and demonstrates that they can serve as tools to study the structure of their building blocks. Following the lead of structural biology, we expect that single-supercrystal X-ray diffraction will provide atomic-resolution insight into elusive features of nanocrystals, such as facet-specific surface structure, ligand density and binding motifs, and the presence of strain fields within the inorganic core.
Stefano Toso acknowledges the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Funding Program (Project SUPER-QD, Grant Agreement No. 101148934). The work of Dmitry Baranov was funded by the European Union (ERC Starting Grant PROMETHEUS, project no. 101039683). We acknowledge the MAX IV Laboratory for beamtime on the ForMAX beamline under proposal 20230363.
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