What is the crystal structure of tin telluride?

Tin telluride (SnTe) is a compound of tin and tellurium, is an IV-VI narrow bandgap semiconductor, and has a direct bandgap of 0.18 eV. It is often alloyed with lead to make lead tin telluride, which is used as infrared detector material. Tin telluride has excellent thermal and electrical conductivity, allowing for both high electron mobility and low thermal conductivity. ^[1]

Tin telluride is a narrow gap semiconductor with promising properties for IR optical applications and topological insulators. There is a convenient colloidal synthesis of quasi-two-dimensional SnTe nanocrystals through the hot-injection method in a non-polar solvent. By introducing the halide alkane 1-bromotetradecane as well as oleic acid and trioctylphosphine, the thickness of two dimensional SnTe nanostripes can be tuned down to 30 nm, while the lateral dimensional can reach 6 microns. The obtained SnTe nanostripes are single-crystalline with a rock-salt crystal structure. 

Amongst the vast compound semiconductors, tin telluride (SnTe) is a potential candidate to find interest in the 2D form. The single crystals in the 2D flake forms of SnTe are grown by vapour transport technique in direct mode within closed quartz ampoule geometry. The stoichiometry of as-grown crystals is confirmed by the energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, which showed that the as-grown SnTe single crystals to be near stoichiometric but slightly Te rich. The analysis by X-ray diffraction of as-grown SnTe single crystals confirmed the cubic structure having lattice parameters of a = b = c = 6.31 Å and α = β = γ = 90°. ^[2]

Reference

[1] Kannaujiya, Rohitkumar M., et al. "Growth and characterizations of tin telluride (SnTe) single crystals." The European Physical Journal Plus 135 (2020): 1-12.

[2] Fu Li. “Single-Crystalline Colloidal Quasi-2D Tin Telluride.” Advanced Materials Interfaces 7 12 (2020).