Li Jingpeng, Hao Shiqiang, Qu Shangqing, Wolverton Christopher, Zhao Jing, Wang Yonggang
The Beijing Municipal Key Laboratory of New Energy Materials and Technologies, School of Materials Sciences and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, United States.
Inorg Chem. 2021 Jan 4;60(1):325-333. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c02966. Epub 2020 Dec 11.
Transition-metal-based chalcogenides are a series of intriguing semiconductors with applications spanning various fields because of their rich structure and numerous functionalities. This paper reports the crystal structure and basic physical properties of a new quaternary chalcogenide InPbSbS. The crystal structure of InPbSbS was determined by both powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction techniques. InPbSbS crystallizes in the monoclinic system with 2/ space group, and the structure parameters are = 26.483 Å, = 3.899 Å, = 32.696 Å, and β = 111.86°. The polyhedral double chains of Sb and Sb/Pb as the main cations are parallel to each other and form a Jamesonite-like mineral structure through the short chain links of the distorted In, Pb, and Sb polyhedron. InPbSbS exhibits a moderate experimental band gap of 1.42 eV, indicating its potential for application in solar cells and photocatalysis. In addition, InPbSbS exhibits good ambient stability, and differential scanning calorimetry tests demonstrate that it is stable up to 892 K in a nitrogen atmosphere. Moreover, InPbSbS exhibits extremely low thermal conductivity (0.438-0.478 W m K ranging from 300 to 700 K) compared with binary counterparts such as PbS and InS. Future chemical manipulation via elemental doping or defect engineering may make the title compound a potential thermoelectric or thermal insulating material.
