Rapid Growth of a Cuboid DKDP (KD_xH_2–xPO₄) Crystal

Abstract

The pyramid−prism interface in "point-seed" rapidly grown DKDP (KD x H 2−x PO 4 ) crystals affects the quality of tripler-cut samples used in inertial confinement fusion devices. In this study, a cuboid DKDP crystal without a pyramidal sector was rapidly grown. The quality of the cuboid DKDP crystal was evaluated by measuring the deuterium homogeneity, crystalline quality, transmission spectrum, and laser-induced damage performance. The total number N of tripler-cut samples that can be obtained from the cuboid DKDP crystal is easily calculated. The size of the tripler-cut sample is approximately equal to the cross-section of this cuboid DKDP crystal. Moreover, as this cuboid DKDP crystal has a regular shape, calculating the mass of the crystal and accurately controlling the supersaturation of the solution during growth is easy. The successful crystal growth using this proposed approach establishes the possibility of growing large-aperture cuboid DKDP crystals. Currently, research on the rapid growth of a cuboid DKDP crystal with an aperture of more than 40 cm is underway.Article pubs.acs.org/crystal

Rapid growth of a long-seed KDP crystal

“…In the wavelength range of 377-1022 nm, the transmittance is higher than 90%, which is almost the same as that of the cuboid DKDP crystal. The transmittance at 355 nm is 82.9%, a little higher than that of the cuboid DKDP crystal [24] . The various factors responsible for the origin and influence of optical transmittance can be found from peer-reviewed literature [34][35][36] .…”

“…As defined by the plane wave dynamic theory of X-ray diffraction, a smaller value of FWHM indicates better crystallinity [32,33] . For the cuboid DKDP crystal, the FWHM of the HRXRD is also 28.8 arc seconds, indicating that there is no essential difference in crystalline quality between the cuboid KDP-type crystal and the long-seed KDP-type crystal [24] .…”

“…The THG-oriented samples cut from the cuboid KDP-type crystal and the long-seed KDP-type crystal are shown in Figure 2. As in our previous work, the number N of THGoriented samples cut from the cuboid KDP-type crystal follows the formulas below [24] :…”

“…The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the HRXRD is 28.8 arc seconds, indicating that the long-seed KDP crystal has good crystalline quality. More details about the testing can be found in other articles [18,24] . As defined by the plane wave dynamic theory of X-ray diffraction, a smaller value of FWHM indicates better crystallinity [32,33] .…”

“…Email: qhj@siom.ac.cn (H. Qi); jdshao@mail.shcnc.ac.cn (J. Shao) matching [22,23] . More recently, a cuboid DKDP crystal was rapidly grown [24] . Without a pyramidal sector, the cuboid DKDP crystal had high cutting efficiency to obtain third harmonic generation (THG)-oriented samples for ICF.…”