Sn⁴⁺ Alloying and Chiral Incorporation into Tellurium Halides Triggering Tunable Luminescence Emission and...

Recently, chiral organic-inorganic hybrid metal halides have attracted considerable interest as promising multifunctional materials, benefiting from their diverse structures and tunable photophysical properties. Herein, by introducing the chiral ligand methylbenzylamine (R-/S-MBA) and alloying Sn⁴⁺ cation, a series of tellurium-based halides R-/S-MBASnTeCl (x = 0, 0.125, 0.2, 0.365 and 0.54) with second-harmonic generation (SHG) effect and photoluminescence (PL) properties are successfully synthesized. Their optical bandgaps are determined to be 2.48-2.6 eV. Specifically, the introduction of chiral organic cations could break the structural symmetry and cause the tellurium halide to crystallize in the chiral space group. The incorporation of isovalent Sn⁴⁺ into the chiral host tellurium halides results in the increase in octahedral distortion, thereby promoting host intrinsic self-trapped emission that originates from the interconfigurational ³P_0,1 → ¹S₀ transitions of Te⁴⁺. Consequently, the as-prepared Sn⁴⁺ doped halides, R-/S-MBA₂SnTe_1-Cl₆ (x = 0.365, 0.54), exhibit not only SHG response but also bright orange fluorescence. This study provides an effective strategy for designing chiral multifunctional materials.