Abstract
The effect of dopant alkali metal Na(I) (over a wide concentration range from 0.33 to 0.75mol%) on the growth process, external morphology, vibration patterns, XRD profile, thermal studies, optical density and second order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals grown by the slow evaporation solution growth (SEST) and Sankaranarayanan–Ramasamy (SR) techniques has been systematically investigated. Incorporation of the dopant into the crystalline matrix even at a low concentration was well confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray spectra (EDS). The change in intensity patterns in XRD profiles of doping specimens reveals lattice distortion, further supported by slight shifts in characteristic vibrational frequencies in FT-IR. UV–vis study shows that the transparency is not affected much by the dopants and the diffuse reflectance data were employed to estimate the band gap energy by the application of Kubelka–Munk algorithm. The thermogravimetric/differential thermal analysis reveals the purity of the sample and no decomposition is observed upto the melting point. The surface morphology of the as-grown specimens changes with concentration of dopant. The second harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency is enhanced considerably when the concentration of the dopant is equal to that of host material in the mixed crystal while depressed activity is observed when the concentration of one of the compounds is high.
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