Effect of rare earth ions on the properties of glycine phosphite single crystals

Optically transparent glycine phosphite (GPI) single crystals doped with rare earth metal ions (Ce, Nd and La) were grown from aqueous solution by employing the solvent evaporation and slow cooling methods. Co-ordination of dopants with GPI was confirmed by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopic analysis. Single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis was carried out to determine the lattice parameters and to analyze the structural morphology of GPI with dopants, which indicates that cell parameters of doped crystals were significantly varied with pure GPI. Crystalline perfection of doped GPI crystals was determined by high resolution X-ray diffraction analysis by means of full width at half maximum values. Influence of the dopants on the optical properties of the material was determined. Paraelectric to ferroelectric transition temperature (T-c) of doped GPI crystals were identified using differential scanning calorimetric measurements. Piezoelectric charge coefficient d(33) was measured for pure and doped GPI crystals. Hysteresis (P-E) loop was traced for ferroelectric b-axis and (100) plane of pure and doped GPI crystals with different biasing field and ferroelectric parameters were calculated. Mechanical stability of crystals was determined by Vickers microhardness measurements; elastic stiffness constant 'C-11' and yield strength 'sigma(y)' were calculated from hardness values. Mechanical and ferroelectric properties of doped crystals were improved with doping of rare earth metals. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.