Leveraging The Preferences in Transition Metal-P/Si Bonding to Design Novel Chiral Materials

Non-centrosymmetric chiral intermetallic compounds with antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling exhibit a plethora of emergent properties. Chemical bonding preferences in the transition metal silicon-phosphides TM-Si-P create the asymmetric environment around metal atoms resulting in high abundance of non-centrosymmetric chiral and polar crystal structures. The synthesis of those phases is hampered by inertness of TM and Si in contrast to high reactivity and vapor pressure of phosphorus. We developed a comprehensive synthetic strategy allowing to produce single crystals and phase-pure polycrystalline samples of metal tetrel-pnictides. The correlation between the crystal structure, chemical bonding, and optical and properties will be discussed with focus of earth abundant TM for applications.