“…Inspired by the previous work mentioned above, we attempted to seek out Hg-based chalcogenides with favorable overall properties as potential IR NLO crystals. To improve NLO performance, metals (M = As, Sb, Sn and Te) with lone pair electrons, promoting preferable NLO effects, 30–35 were introduced to form trigonal pyramids as promising building units, facilitating synergetic tuning with Hg-based groups to balance the SHG effect, band gap, and birefringence comprehensively. Following the introduction of the above building units, the directivity of groups can also be adjusted and perfected for improved NLO performance according to the anionic group theory.…”