Coassembly between the Largest and Smallest Metal Chalcogenide Supertetrahedral Clusters

Reported
here is the first crystalline inorganic–organic hybrid material
combining In, Ge, and Cu. The trimetallic system undergoes a nanoscale
separation into small In–Ge–S supertetrahedral T2 clusters
and large In–Cu–S T5 clusters, which are further assembled
into a T2–T5 mixed layer. This material reveals the long-range
crystallographically ordered assembly from supertetrahedral clusters
with 3 orders of difference, the largest size mismatch known so far
for mixed-supertetrahedral-cluster materials. Theoretical simulations
were performed to probe the contribution to the band structure by
the different-sized semiconducting clusters.