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It remains a challenge to develop UV nonlinear optical (NLO) crystals that can achieve a desirable trade-off on UV absorption edge, second harmonic generation (SHG), and birefringence. Here we report a thiosulfate UV NLO crystal of a 2D van der Waals layered structure, C(NH2)32SO3S. Remarkably, this thiosulfate realizes the desired trade-off, with a short absorption edge of 254 nm, a strong SHG response of approximately 2.8 times that of the benchmark KH2PO4, and a sufficient birefringence of 0.073 at the wavelength of 546 nm. In addition, it exhibits strong in-plane anisotropy of the SHG intensity. According to the first-principles calculations, the non-π-conjugated SO3S2– anion is the dominant SHG functional gene, while the π-conjugated C(NH2)3+ cation serves as the functional gene of birefringence. This is different from common UV NLO materials whose functionals of SHG and birefringence are the same. These findings indicate that combining different function genes may be an effective strategy to develop outstanding NLO materials with the desirable property trade-off.
Liu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.