Dynamic Bismuth Clusters in an Ionic Conducting Copper Iodide Matrix
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Black, apparently air-stable crystals of (Bi9)[Cu8I13], is grown by reacting Bi, Cu, and BiI3 in an evacuated, sealed silica ampoule. At room temperature, the structure exhibits eight formula units of largely disordered (Bi9)5+ polycations, which appear as hollow spheres of inhomogeneously distributed electron density on a temporal and spatial average. The clusters are embedded in a disordered 3D framework of iodidocuprate(I) tetrahedra. The structure adopts the centrosymmetric space group Fm (Formula presented.) c and can be described as a filling variant of the NaZn13 structure type with Cu+ cations distributed across the numerous tetrahedral voids. At 100 K, the crystal structure is fully ordered and adopts the noncentrosymmetric, monoclinic space group Cc with pseudocubic metrics. The (Bi9)5+ cluster has the rarely observed shape of a capped square antiprism. The disorder in the [Cu8I13]5− part indicates mobility of the copper(I) cations. Impedance measurements reveal poor electronic conductivity and a weak ionic conductivity of 5 × 10−5 S cm−1 at room temperature. The electronic band structure shows a wide gap between the bonding and antibonding states of the [Cu8I13]5− framework, in which molecular states of the bismuth polycations are located, reducing the bandgap to about 0.80 eV.
Details
| Original language | English |
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| Article number | e2500027 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Zeitschrift fur Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie |
| Volume | 651 (2025) |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 1 Mar 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
| ORCID | /0000-0002-2391-6025/work/181860000 |
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Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- bismuth, NaZn structure types, order–disorder transitions, polycations, structure dynamics