Organic–inorganic
hybrid Pb-halide perovskites
have attracted
tremendous interest due to their potential application in photovoltaic
and optoelectronic fields. However, the toxicity and poor stability
of Pb-halide perovskites have become key bottlenecks toward their
future commercialization and industrialization. Therefore, in this
work, two novel hybrid lead-free perovskite nonlinear optical (NLO)
crystals (2-AMP)2BiX7·H2O (X
= Cl, Br) with high stability were successfully synthesized. Both
the crystals belong to the orthorhombic P212121 space group, displaying a zero-dimensional
perovskite structure. The thermal, environmental, and solvent atmospheric
stabilities were comprehensively investigated, with high thermal stability
up to 170 °C and high environmental and high solvent atmospheric
stability observed for (2-AMP)2BiBr7·H2O. First-principles calculations were carried out to study
the relationship of the structure and properties. A large birefringence
of 0.1368@1064 nm was determined for (2-AMP)2BiBr7·H2O, which was derived from the strong aeolotropic
conjugated π-electron distribution of planar 2-aminomethylpyridium.
A second-harmonic generation (SHG) effect that was 0.25 and 0.32 times
that of KH2PO4 (KDP) was measured for (2-AMP)2BiCl7·H2O and (2-AMP)2BiBr7·H2O, respectively, and the stronger
SHG response of bromide was attributed to the larger distortions of
{BiBr6} octahedrons. This work may offer new guidance for
exploration of low toxicity and high stability of perovskite NLO materials.