Journal article
Structural and electronic features enabling delocalized charge-carriers in CuSbSe2
- Abstract:
- Inorganic semiconductors based on heavy pnictogen cations (Sb3+ and Bi3+) have gained significant attention as potential nontoxic and stable alternatives to lead-halide perovskites for solar cell applications. A limitation of these novel materials, which is being increasingly commonly found, is carrier localization, which substantially reduces mobilities and diffusion lengths. Herein, CuSbSe2 is investigated and discovered to have delocalized free carriers, as shown through optical pump terahertz probe spectroscopy and temperature-dependent mobility measurements. Using a combination of theory and experiment, the critical enabling factors are found to be: 1) having a layered structure, which allows distortions to the unit cell during the propagation of an acoustic wave to be relaxed in the interlayer gaps, with minimal changes in bond length, thus limiting deformation potentials; 2) favourable quasi-bonding interactions across the interlayer gap giving rise to higher electronic dimensionality; 3) Born effective charges not being anomalously high, which, combined with the small bandgap (≤ 1.2 eV), result in a low ionic contribution to the dielectric constant compared to the electronic contribution, thus reducing the strength of Fröhlich coupling. These insights can drive forward the rational discovery of perovskite-inspired materials that can avoid carrier localization.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.8MB, Terms of use)
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(Supplementary materials, zip, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-024-55254-2
Authors
+ UK Research and Innovation
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/001aqnf71
- Grant:
- EP/X022900/1
+ Royal Academy of Engineering
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0526snb40
- Grant:
- RF\201718\17101
+ Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0439y7842
- Grant:
- EP/V014498/2
- EP/X527257/1
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 65
- Publication date:
- 2025-01-02
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-12-04
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2041-1723
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
2074553
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2074553
- Source identifiers:
-
2559819
- Deposit date:
-
2025-01-03
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Fu et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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