Synthesis, nucleation kinetics, spectral, structural, mechanical, and thermal studies of semi-organic barium-doped γ-glycine single crystal

• Published in: Journal of materials science. Materials in electronics Vol. 32; no. 24; pp. 28494 - 28514
• Main Authors: Premlatha, K., Krishnamoorthy, P., Rajagopalan, N. R., Arumugam, T. K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-12-2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Barium; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Crystal growth; Crystal structure; Cut off wavelength; Diamond pyramid hardness; Differential thermal analysis; Differential thermogravimetric analysis; Functional groups; Glycine; Kinetics; Materials Science; Molecular structure; Morphology; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Nucleation; Optical and Electronic Materials; Parameters; Second harmonic generation; Single crystals; Surface energy; Thermal stability
• ISSN: 0957-4522; 1573-482X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10854-021-07230-5

The single crystal of barium ion-doped
γ
-Glycine (BGG) has been synthesized by slow evaporation technique. The grown crystal was subjected to the characterization studies such as XRD, nucleation Kinetics, UV, FTIR, micro-hardness, SEM with EDAX, SHG analysis, NMR, and thermal Studies. The cell parameters
a
 = 
b
 = 7.210,
c
 = 5.845,
α
 = 
β
 = 90°,
and γ
 = 120° revealed that BGG belongs to the hexagonal crystal system with P3
1
space group. The nucleation kinetic parameters were derived from nucleation studies and an agreement between the experimental and theoretical values of interfacial surface energy has been established. Optical transparency of the grown crystal was investigated by UV spectrum. The lower optical cutoff wavelength and the band gap values have been found to be at 328 nm and 3.5 eV, respectively. The vibrational frequencies of various functional groups in the crystal have been derived from FTIR spectrum and further employed to identify the molecular structure of the crystal. Microhardness mechanical studies carried out by Vickers microhardness method showed that hardness number (
H
V
) increases with load for BGG crystal. Surface morphology of the grown crystal has been examined through SEM with EDAX. Kurtz Perry technique has been adopted to measure the Second harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency of the title crystal and has been found to be 1.16 times as that of standard KDP. The chemical structure and the molecular arrangement position of the grown crystal were established by
13
C and
1
H NMR spectrum. The thermogravimetric and differential thermal analysis showed that BGG is thermally stable up to 320.43 °C. The results of the aforementioned characterizations attested that the grown BGG crystal can be used as a potential fabrication material in nonlinear optical devices.