Tellurium(IV) Halide Achieving Effective Nonlinear-Optical Activity: The Role of Chiral Ligands and Lattice Distortion

Chiral organic-inorganic hybrid metal halides are a promising class of nonlinear-optical materials with unique optical properties and flexible crystal structures. However, the structures and properties of chiral hybrid tellurium halides, especially second harmonic generation (SHG), have not been reported. Here, by introducing chiral organic molecule (R/S)-methylbenzylammonium (R/S-MBA), we synthesized a pair of novel zero-dimensional (0D) chiral tellurium-based hybrid halides with noncentrosymmetric space group C2, (R/S-MBA)₂TeCl₆ (R/S-Cl). Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis and solid-state circular dichroism (CD) spectra confirm that R/S-Cl shows obvious enantiomer enrichment. Moreover, the resulting chiral products present an efficient SHG response. Interestingly, through manipulation of halogen atoms, two pairs of achiral tellurium halides, (R/S-MBA)₂TeBr₆ (R/S-Br) and (R/S-MBA)₂TeI₆ (R/S-I), were obtained, both of which crystallize in the centrosymmetric space group R3̅. It is noteworthy that R/S-I has a narrow band gap of 1.55 eV, which is smaller than that of most 0D metal halides and comparable to that of three-dimensional lead halide, showing its potential as a highly efficient light absorber.