Substitution mechanisms and location of Co2+ ions in congruent and stoichiometric lithium niobate crystals derived from electron paramagnetic resonance data

Abstract

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra and their angular dependencies were measured for Co2+ trace impurities in stoichiometric samples of lithium niobate doped with rhodium. It was found that Co2+ substitutes for Li+ in the dominant axial center (CoLi) and that the principal substitution mechanism in stoichiometric lithium niobate is 4Co2+ ↔ 3Li+ + Nb5+. The four Co2+ ions can occupy the nearest possible cation sites by occupying a Nb site and its three nearest-neighbor Li sites, creating a trigonal pyramid with C3 symmetry, as well as non-neighboring sites (e.g. a CoNb–CoLi pair at the nearest sites on the C3 axis with two nearby isolated single Co2+ ions substituted for Li+). In congruent crystals and samples with Li content enriched by vapor transport equilibrium treatment the excess charge of the Co2+ centers is compensated by lithium vacancies located rather far from the Co2+ ions for the dominant axial center or in the nearest neighborhood for low-symmetry satellite centers (the Co2+ ↔ 2Li+ substitution mechanism). The use of exact numerical diagonalization of the spin-Hamiltonian matrices explains all the details of the EPR spectra and gives a value for hyperfine interaction A|| that is several times smaller than that obtained using perturbation formulae. The refined values of A and g-tensor components can be used as reliable cornerstones for ab initio and cluster calculations.