Study on rapid growth of highly-deuterated DKDP crystals

Highly-deuterated potassium dihydrogen phosphate (DKDP) crystals were gown rapidly from point seeds under high supersaturation in a temperature range of 40-60 degreesC. The growth rate was about 1-2 order of magnitude higher than that of the traditional temperature reduction method. It was found that highly pure raw materials, overheating at high temperature, ultrafine filtration and supersaturation stability were needed to keep the solution from spontaneous nucleation at high overcooling. The effect of growth conditions on pyramid faces was different from that of prismatic faces. The tetragonal to monoclinic phase solubility transition scarcely occurred in our experiments even though the overcooling of monoclinic phase was as high as 10degreesC in some cases. (C) 2003 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.