Publication date: 15th December 2025
Zintl phosphides are emerging as an alternative class of inorganic solar absorbers that challenge conventional high-performance paradigms. A key differentiator of these materials is mixed bonding motifs and polyanionic units that depart from conventional II-VI , III-V, and perovskite chemistries. This family has progressively demonstrated unusually long non-radiative carrier lifetimes for inorganic materials, favorable defect physics, and phase stability across multiple synthesis formats. Our initial work on BaCd2P2 established nanosecond-scale recombination dynamics and strong thermal stability in powders. We followed our work on BaCd2P2 powders with the synthesis of quantum dots exhibiting a 21% photoluminescence quantum yield. Continued efforts produced CaZn2P2 thin films at low-temperature with ~30 ns carrier lifetimes (by TRMC), demonstrating translation to device-relevant geometries. Our recent studies on SrZn2P2 thin films reveal that halide-assisted post-annealing, similar to CdTe’s CdCl2 treatment, improves grain structure and PL intensity, likely through grain-boundary passivation.
ZnP2 represents the most exciting member of this family. Across single-crystal, powder, and thin-film forms, we observe carrier lifetimes in the hundreds-of-nanoseconds range—an exceptional result among inorganic absorbers and an order(s)-of-magnitude improvement over Zn3P2 and similar phosphides. These efforts identify polyphosphide motifs and shallow-defect formation as central to the suppressed non-radiative recombination channels and highlight a broader chemical design space for high-performance semiconductors.
Collectively, these results show that Zintl-phase phosphides constitute a new absorber platform with earth-abundant elements, scalable thin-film growth, and inherently long lifetimes without relying on hybrid chemistries. This work expands the conceptual boundaries of inorganic photovoltaic materials and points toward a wider class of polyanionic and mixed-bond semiconductors with tunable electronic structure, strong absorption, and promising optoelectronic response.
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