Exploration of new intermetallic compounds grown via p-block fluxes

The metal flux method has emerged as a strong tool for the synthesis of single crystals for a large number of intermetallic compounds.  Intermetallic compounds are at the heart of exploratory growth and discovery of new materials due to their wide variety of physical properties, such as, e.g., superconductivity, topology, magnetism, thermoelectricity, etc. We have explored intermetallics with p-block elements as fluxes. Here we report on the growth, structures, and characterization of new compounds. While many binaries have been obtained, such as SmIn₂, InMn₃, SmTe₂, etc., these experiments open the door to continue the exploration to find new materials. For example, the intermetallic compound Cu₂SmSi₂ was obtained using the flux technique with Indium as  a passive flux.