When van der Waals Met Kagome: A 2D Antimonide with a Vanadium-Kagome Network.

2D materials showcase unconventional properties emerging from quantum confinement effects. In this work, a "soft chemical" route allows for the deintercalation of K from the layered antimonide KVSb, resulting in the discovery of a new metastable 2D-Kagome antimonide KVSb with a van der Waals gap of 3.2 Å.

A Recipe for a Great Meal: A Benchtop Route from Elemental Se to Superior Thermoelectric β-AgSe.

The low-temperature modification of β-AgSe has proven to be useful as a near-room-temperature thermoelectric material. Over the past years, research has been devoted to interstitial, vacancy, and substitutional doping into the parent β-AgSe structure, aiming at tuning the material's charge and heat transport properties to enhance thermoelectric performance. The transformation of β-AgSe into α-AgSe at ∼134 °C and the low solubility of dopants are the main obstacles for the doping approach.

Inducing Ferrimagnetic Exchange in 1D-FeSe Chains Using Heteroleptic Amine Complexes: [Fe(en)(tren)][FeSe].

[Fe(en)(tren)][FeSe] ( = ethylenediamine, CHN, = tris(2-aminoethyl)amine, CHN) has been synthesized by a mixed-ligand solvothermal method. Its crystal structure contains heteroleptic [Fe(en)(tren)] complexes with distorted octahedral coordination, incorporated between 1D-FeSe chains composed of edge-sharing FeSe tetrahedra. The twisted octahedral coordination environment of the Fe-amine complex leads to partial dimerization of Fe-Fe distances in the FeSe chains so that the FeSe polyhedra deviate strongly from the regular tetrahedral geometry.

Make Selenium Reactive Again: Activating Elemental Selenium for Synthesis of Metal Selenides Ranging from Nanocrystals to Large Single Crystals.

The inertness of elemental selenium is a significant obstacle in the synthesis of selenium-containing materials at low reaction temperatures. Over the years, several recipes have been developed to overcome this hurdle; however, most of the methods are associated with the use of highly toxic, expensive, and environmentally harmful reagents. As such, there is an increasing demand for the design of cheap, stable, and nontoxic reactive selenium precursors usable in the low-temperature synthesis of transition metal selenides with vast applications in nanotechnology, thermoelectrics, and superconductors.