A polar and chiral indium telluride featuring supertetrahedral T2 clusters and nonlinear optical second harmonic generation

The intermetallic Zintl phase of nominal composition was reported to react with the Te to produce a layered chiral compound with truncated adamantane clusters. The crystal structure of the Te compound was determined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data collected at 100K on a STOE II X-ray diffractometer. The arrangement of In-Te network if found to create windows of size 0.81 nm within the layers defined by 18-membered rings formed by nine tetrahedral indium sites. The total charge of each window is found to be -3 and is balanced by octahedral, which occupy the middle of each window. The distance between adjacent layers of Te compound is approximately 0.5 Å, which is filled by one-half of each metal complex, the terminal en molecules, and disordered free en molecules. The solid-state UV-vis absorption of a single crystal of Te compound reveal an absorption edge at approximately 2.2 eV, consistent with its orange color.