The Combination of Structure Prediction and Experiment for the Exploration of Alkali-Earth Metal-Contained Chalcopyrite-Like IR Nonlinear Optical Material

• Main Authors: Chu, Y. (Author), Li, J. (Author), Pan, S. (Author), Tudi, A. (Author), Wang, P. (Author), Xie, C. (Author), Yang, Z. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc 2022
• Subjects: Alkali earth metal; alkaline earth metals; Alkaline-earth metals; Balanced property; chalcogenide; Chalcopyrite-like structure; chalcopyrite-like structures; Combinations of structures; Copper compounds; Energy gap; Gallium compounds; Harmonic generation; Laser damage; Magnesium compounds; Nonlinear optical crystal; nonlinear optical materials; Nonlinear optical materials; Nonlinear optics; Optical materials; Phase matching; Selenium compounds; Silver compounds; Structure experiment; Structure prediction; Tetrahedral unit; tetrahedral units
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Design and fabrication of new infrared (IR) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials with balanced properties are urgently needed since commercial chalcopyrite-like (CL) NLO crystals are suffering from their intrinsic drawbacks. Herein, the first defect-CL (DCL) alkali-earth metal (AEM) selenide IR NLO material, DCL-MgGa2Se4, has been rationally designed and fabricated by a structure prediction and experiment combined strategy. The introduction of AEM tetrahedral unit MgSe4 effectively widens the band gap of DCL compounds. The title compound exhibits a wide band gap of 2.96 eV, resulting in a high laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) of ≈3.0 × AgGaS2 (AGS). Furthermore, the compound shows a suitable second harmonic generation (SHG) response (≈0.9 × AGS) with a type-I phase-matching (PM) behavior and a wide IR transparent range. The results indicate that DCL-MgGa2Se4 is a promising mid-to-far IR NLO material and give some insights into the design of new CL compound with outstanding IR NLO properties based on the AEM tetrahedra and the structure predication and experiment combined strategy. © 2022 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.