A Potassium Tungsten Oxyfluoride with Strong Second-Harmonic Generation Response Derived from Anion-Ordered Functional Motif.

The unity of structure-property design and practical synthesis is a key to develop nonlinear optical (NLO) materials. However, many designed structures are hard to get because of the incapability of controlling the arrangement of structural motifs. After careful synthesis, we successfully obtained a new NLO crystal with expected properties, KWO3F, which features a long-range anion-ordered while directed parallel arrangement of [WO5F] d0 transition metal fluorooxo-functional (d0 [TMOF]) motifs. This arrangement is vital to achieve a strong second-harmonic generation (SHG) response, which is proved by dipole moment analyses and theoretical calculations. Remarkably, KWO3F possesses a strong phase-matching SHG response (3 × KDP), high thermal stability (stable up to 350 °C in air), a large laser damage threshold (LDT, 129.7 MW/cm2), a wide transparent window (0.5-10 μm), and a suitable birefringence (0.088 @ 1064 nm). Our research demonstrated that the introduction of the NLO-active d0 [TMOF] motif is an effective strategy to design new potential NLO materials.