Crystal growth of emerging chiral materials Ag₃AuSe₂ and (Nb₄Se₁₅I₂)I₂

Chiral symmetry is a requirement for the formation of Weyl points, while a material with accessible Weyl physics should also have a low density of states near the Fermi energy. By efficiently exploring chemical space experimentally, and evaluating calculated band structures, our group is working to increase the population of materials that exhibit Weyl-point-driven physics. We will present characterization of two chiral semiconductors. Cubic Ag₃AuSe₂ forms large crystals with millimeter size and a direct band gap concentrated around its Γ point, and our ability to tune this gap is probed by transport measurements. Separately, the chain compound (Nb₄Se₁₅I₂)I₂ is part of a materials class that includes the popular Weyl compound (TaSe₄)₂I. In (Nb₄Se₁₅I₂)I₂, individual chains are chiral but their stacking leads to a c-glide that removes chirality of the structure as a whole. It forms long needles with semiconducting transport. Next steps for engineering and utilizing these materials will be presented.