Effect of Cd2+ on the Growth and Thermal Properties of K2SO4 crystal

TL;DR

This study investigates how doping potassium sulfate crystals with Cd2+ ions affects their growth, structure, thermal phase transition behavior, and optical transmittance, revealing improved properties with doping.

Contribution

It demonstrates successful growth of Cd2+ doped K2SO4 crystals and analyzes their structural, thermal, and optical property modifications due to doping.

Findings

Cd2+ doping reduces phase transition hysteresis from 8 K to 3.5 K.

Doped crystals exhibit higher optical transmittance.

X-ray diffraction confirms maintained crystal structure after doping.

Abstract

Single crystals of pure and Cd2+ doped potassium sulfate were grown from aqueous solutions by the slow evaporation technique. From nutrient solutions with a CdSO4 concentration of 4wt.% crystals containing 0.014wt.% dopant concentration could be obtained. The X-ray diffraction patterns of powdered crystals confirmed their crystal structures for both cases. Thermal analysis of pure crystals shows that the alpha-beta phase transformation peak around 580 deg C is superimposed with spurious effects, while for Cd2+ doped crystals this is not the case. The thermal hysteresis of the phase transition is 8 K for undoped K2SO4 and is reduced to 3.5 K for K2SO4:Cd2+. Compared to undoped crystals, the optical transmittance of Cd2+ doped crystals is higher.