High-Temperature Crystal Structure and Chemical Bonding in Thermoelectric Germanium Selenide (GeSe)

The discovery of the ultra-high thermoelectric figure of merit of 2.6 in SnSe has drawn attention to other lead-free IV-VI orthorhombic semiconductors. GeSe has been predicted to possess thermoelectric performances comparable to SnSe. Here, a complete structural study is reported of GeSe with temperature by means of high-resolution synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction. In the orthorhombic phase, the evolution of the bond distances with temperature is shown to deviate significantly with respect to SnSe. Analysis of the chemical bonding within the Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules shows that GeSe is ionic with van der Waals interlayer interactions. The signature of the N shell lone pair of Ge is also evident from both the electron density Laplacian and the ELF topologies.