Developing New Alkali Metal-Based Chalcogenides with the Field of Optoelectronic Devices

The flourishing field of optoelectronic devices is accountable for driving the development of new alkali metal-based chalcogenides consisting of qualities that have to be examined strongly.

The requirement for effective optoelectronic devices is on the rise and hand-in-hand with the difficulty of finding new semiconductors with useful properties. This has urged considerable research in the synthesis and characterization of new alkali metal-based (AM) chalcogenides including silver, copper and alkali metal with useful properties like semiconductivity, flexibility, high thermal stability and photovoltaic effects.

Having got inspiration from the growing demand for new optimum semiconducting materials, a new study reported in EPJ B authored by Abdelmadjid Bouhemadou, Laboratory for Developing New Materials and their Characterizations, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Ferhat Abbas Setif, Algeria and his co-authors, examined the elastic, structural, optical and electronic properties of two newly synthesized compounds, called Tl₂CdGeSe₄ and Tl₂CdSnSe₄.

In the study performed, the authors explain concerns with AM-based chalcogenides which impede technological applications. The authors add that these drawbacks could be defeated by compounds that combine thallium (Tl), such as Tl₂CdGeSe₄ and Tl₂CdSnSe₄.

Tl is much less electropositive compared to alkali metals, describe the scientists. The electronegativity of Tl seems to be much greater than that of any alkali metal. This results in a less ionic character in Tl-based compounds, which might lead to low electrical resistivities and hence to greater carrier mobilities.

Also, Tl is bulkier compared to any stable alkali metal, which implies it has low lattice thermal conductivity enhancing physical properties that need low lattice thermal conductivity like thermoelectric efficiency.

Also, Tl-containing materials are likely to be less sensitive to moisture and air compared to AM-based compounds. These and other benefits imply that considerable research has been dedicated to the investigation of Tl-based chalcogenides.

The study authors say that their study disclosed that the studied materials tend to illustrate a high absorption in an energy window consisting of the visible spectrum. Besides this, the improved structural parameters of Tl₂CdGeSe₄ and Tl₂CdSnSe₄ are in superior agreement with the experimental counterparts.

This verifies the reliability of the theoretical method utilized to forecast the physical properties of the title compounds.

This unraveled that the studied compounds are ductile, soft, mechanically stable and significantly, structurally and elastically anisotropic materials.

Journal Reference:

Bhoyar, P. D., et al. (2022) Robustness of directed percolation under relaxation of prerequisites: role of quenched disorder and memory. The European Physical Journal B. doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00326-9.