Dynamic Bismuth Clusters in an Ionic Conducting Copper Iodide Matrix

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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 languageEnglish
Article numbere2500027
Number of pages6
JournalZeitschrift fur Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie
Volume651 (2025)
Issue number8
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 1 Mar 2025
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-2391-6025/work/181860000

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Keywords

  • bismuth, NaZn structure types, order–disorder transitions, polycations, structure dynamics