A Polar Material with Facility of Crystal Growth and a Large Second-Harmonic Generation Response

Abstract

Compounds with a polar space group are widely interesting as they usually exhibit polar properties, such as a second-harmonic generation (SHG) response. Herein, we describe a hexahydrated aluminum iodate, which crystallizes into the polar space group P63. As expected, this polar material is SHG-active, with a powder SHG efficiency of about 8.0× that of the benchmark KH2PO4 (KDP) at 1064 nm in the 30–40 μm particle size range. The UV–vis-NIR spectrum shows that AHIO is transparent from the UV region to the NIR region (0.31–1.63 μm). The measured laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) of AHIO is 647MW/cm2 (1HZ, 10 ns, 1064 nm). Notably, AHIO has a good crystal growth behavior, and its large single crystals have been readily obtained from its aqueous solution.