Cobalt-Induced Phase Transformation of Ni 3 Ga 4 Generates Chiral Intermetallic Co 3 Ni 3 Ga 8 .

The scientific community has found immense difficulty to focus on the generation of chiral intermetallics compared to the chiral molecular structure, probably due to the technical difficulty in producing them as no general controlled protocol is available. Herein, using a conventional metal flux technique, we have discovered a new ternary intermetallic Co 3 Ni 3 Ga 8 , substituting Co at the Ni sublattice in a highly symmetric Ni 3 Ga 4 ( I a3̅ d ). Co 3 Ni 3 Ga 8 crystallizes in the I 4 1 32 space group, a Sohncke type, and can host the chiral structure. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a ternary intermetallic crystallizing in this space group. The chiral structure of Co 3 Ni 3 Ga 8 is comprehensively mapped by various techniques such as single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD), synchrotron powder XRD, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and theoretically studied using density functional theory. The discovery of this chiral compound can inspire the researchers to design hidden ternary chiral intermetallics to study the exotic electrical and magnetic properties.