The Combination of Structure Prediction and Experiment for the Exploration of Alkali-Earth Metal-Contained Chalcopyrite-Like IR Nonlinear Optical Material.

Design and fabrication of new infrared (IR) nonlinear optical (NLO) materials with balanced properties are urgently needed since commercial chalcopyrite-like (CL) NLO crystals are suffering from their intrinsic drawbacks. Herein, the first defect-CL (DCL) alkali-earth metal (AEM) selenide IR NLO material, DCL-MgGa 2 Se 4 , has been rationally designed and fabricated by a structure prediction and experiment combined strategy. The introduction of AEM tetrahedral unit MgSe 4 effectively widens the band gap of DCL compounds. The title compound exhibits a wide band gap of 2.96 eV, resulting in a high laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) of ≈3.0 × AgGaS 2 (AGS). Furthermore, the compound shows a suitable second harmonic generation (SHG) response (≈0.9 × AGS) with a type-I phase-matching (PM) behavior and a wide IR transparent range. The results indicate that DCL-MgGa 2 Se 4 is a promising mid-to-far IR NLO material and give some insights into the design of new CL compound with outstanding IR NLO properties based on the AEM tetrahedra and the structure predication and experiment combined strategy.