GROWTH OF SODIUM OXALATE AND DOPED SODIUM OXALATE CRYSTALS BY GEL GROWTH TECHNIQUE R. Dhinesh Kumar, A.

Albert Irudaya Raj* and A. Dhayal Raj *Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Sacred Heart College, Tirupattur, Vellore Dt (air_shc@yahoo.co.in ) Abstract Oxalate compounds have many interesting physical properties and hence are used in transducers and in several linear and non-linear mechanical devices. In the present study, Sodium Oxalate and Mercury chloride, Potassium chloride, Iron chloride doped Sodium Oxalate crystals are grown by single diffusion gel growth technique. The effect of gel parameters and dopants on the growth, structure, optical transparency and mechanical properties of the crystals are studied. The grown crystals are colourless, transparent and prismatic. They are characterized by powder X-Ray diffraction to find the phase and crystal structure, FT-IR analysis to identify the functional groups, UV/Vis transmission studies to determine the optical transparency of the crystals and Vickers micro hardness test to study the hardness of the crystals. The results are reported. Keyword. Sodium oxalate; single diffusion; phase; crystal structure; optical transparency.

1. Introduction Oxalate compounds deserve special attention because of their many interesting physical properties such as dielectric, piezoelectric, ferroelectric and optical second harmonic generation. These characteristics of oxalate compounds are exploited for their use in transducers and in several linear and non-linear mechanical devices. They are also used in non-linear optical devices, fabrication of crystal oscillators and controlled laser emission. Addition of foreign ion is reported to greatly influence the growth kinetics, morphology and second harmonic efficiency of oxalate crystals. Amongst the metal oxalates, Sodium Oxalate is visualized to be of great interest because, like citrates, they can also be used to remove calcium ions (Ca2+) from blood plasma. It also prevents blood from clotting. Sodium oxalate has industrial applications such as in metal cleaning, leather tanning, electroplating bath, etc. Sodium Oxalate crystals are reported to be monoclinic having unit cell pameters a = 10.42, b = 5.255 and c = 3.479 and = = 90 .1 It has high stability and good mechanical strength at room temperature. It is thermally unstable and decomposes at 5569C into sodium oxide forms. In the present work pure and doped Sodium Oxalate crystals are grown by gel growth technique. The gel growth technique has gained considerable importance due to its simplicity and effectiveness in growing single crystals of certain compounds. Gel-growth is an alternative technique to solution growth with controlled diffusion and the growth process is free from convection.2 The growth of single crystals in gel is a self purifying process, free from thermal strains which are common in crystals grown from the melt. Gels are prepared in different proportions of sodium metasilicate and acetic acid. Pure Sodium Oxalate crystals and Mercury chloride, Potassium chloride and Iron chloride doped Sodium Oxalate crystals are grown in these different gels and the effect of the gel parameters and dopants on the growth, morphology, structure, optical transparency and hardness of Sodium Oxalate crystals are investigated.