Narrow Band Gap Observed in a Molecular Ferroelastic: Ferrocenium Tetrachloroferrate

Due to the intriguing chemical variability and structure-property flexibility, molecular materials with striking multifunctional characteristics, including tunable physical, chemical, optical, and electronic properties, have aroused wide attention. Recently, great advances have also been made in designing molecular ferroelastics with optoelectronic properties. However, the band gaps of the most typical ferroelastics are far in excess of 2.0 eV, which severely hinder their further applications. And this corresponds to the inherent incompatibility of ferroelastics. Herein we report an organometallic compound, ferrocenium tetrachloroferrate (1), undergoing a ferroelastic phase transition at 407.7 K with a large spontaneous strain of 0.1088. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first molecular ferroelastic with such a high Curie temperature (T_c) and narrow band gap of 1.61 eV. UV-vis absorption spectra and density-functional theory (DFT) calculation confirm this band gap. The band gap of 1 is determined by both the ferrocenium and the tetrachloroferrate components. The ideal semiconducting characteristic makes a breakthrough in the inherent incompatibility with ferroelastics. This will inspire an intriguing and further research in molecular ferroelastics with ideal semiconductor characteristics and hold great potential for the utilization in optoelectronic devices, especially the photovoltaic applications.