Structure of Amorphous Selenium by 2D 77 Se NMR Spectroscopy: An End to the Dilemma of Chain versus Ring

Maxwell Marple; Jackson Badger; Ivan Hung; Zhehong Gan; Kirill Kovnir; Sabyasachi Sen

doi:10.1002/anie.201704323

Structure of Amorphous Selenium by 2D ⁷⁷ Se NMR Spectroscopy: An End to the Dilemma of Chain versus Ring

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2017 Aug 7;56(33):9777-9781. doi: 10.1002/anie.201704323. Epub 2017 Jul 17.

Authors

Maxwell Marple¹, Jackson Badger², Ivan Hung³, Zhehong Gan³, Kirill Kovnir², Sabyasachi Sen¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
² Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA.
³ Center of Interdisciplinary Magnetic Resonance, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Drive, Tallahassee, FL, 32310, USA.

PMID: 28649806
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201704323

Abstract

Amorphous selenium, owing to its tremendous technological importance and perhaps to its chemical simplicity, has been studied for nearly a century and yet an unequivocal structural description of this material remains lacking to date. The primary controversy regarding the structure of amorphous Se relates to the relative fraction of Se atoms residing in ∞1Se chains versus in Se₈ rings. Herein we present the results of a two-dimensional solid-state ⁷⁷ Se nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic study of the chain and ring crystalline allotropes of Se as well as of amorphous Se to unequivocally demonstrate that 1) the Se₈ rings and the ∞1Se chains are characterized by their unique ⁷⁷ Se NMR signatures and 2) the structure of amorphous Se consists exclusively of ∞1Se chains.

Keywords: NMR spectroscopy; amorphous selenium; crystal structure; selenium chains; selenium rings.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't