Chapter 3 Growth of Mercuric Iodide

Abstract

Single crystals of mercuric iodide have important applications as room temperature x-ray and gamma ray detectors and photocells with a wide variety of uses. Although the crystal growth of mercuric iodide was reported as early as the beginning of the century and drew some interest over the years in basic research, due to its solid-state phase transition, most of the progress in producing usable forms of the material has occurred in the past two decades. This chapter reviews the progress on the material processing (synthesis, purification, and growth) of mercuric iodide and describes some current developments. As with many other electronic materials, knowledge of the crystal structure and phase diagram is necessary for controlling the properties of the material as it is processed through the various steps of purification and single crystal growth. This is even more important for HgI 2 because of a destructive phase transformation.