Investigations on the Nucleation Kinetics, Growth and characterization of Glycine Rubidium Chloride (GRC): a promising nonlinear optical single crystal

Abstract

Growth of Glycine Rubidium Chloride (GRC) single crystals were grown from aqueous solution by slow evaporation technique.Investigations on nucleation kinetic parameters are very important tools for the successful growth of good quality, transparent and big-sized single crystals. Glycine Rubidium salt was synthesized and solubility studies have been carried out by gravimetric method in the temperature range of 30-50 o C. The induction period of the GRC salt for the selected super saturation ratio at room temperature was measured. The fundamental nucleation parameters such as Gibbs free energy change, interfacial tension, and critical radius, number of molecules in the critical nucleus and nucleation rate were calculated for GRC sample for the first time based on the classical theory of nucleation. The grown crystals were characterized by X-ray diffraction analyses. The important optical parameters such as absorption coefficient, extinction coefficient, refractiveindex, optical band gap, optical conductivity and electrical conductivity were estimated from UV-vis-NIRspectral analysis to study the linear optical behavior of the material. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) study was used to confirm the presence of various functional groups in the grown crystal. The TG and DTA analyses ensure that the material is thermally stable up to 222 0 C. The hardness parameters such as microhardness number, work hardening coefficient, yield strength and elastic stiffness constant of the grown GRC crystals were calculated from microhardness studies. Second harmonic efficiency (SHG) of the grown material is 1.1866 times as that of KDP crystal. The third-order nonlinearities of GRC crystal have been investigated by Z-scan method. The values of nonlinear refractive index (n 2),