Growth of near‐stoichiometric LiNbO₃ crystals and Li₂O contents determination

Abstract

Abstract Two kinds of near‐stoichiometric LiNbO 3 crystals (SLN11 and SLN19) were grown by a flux pulling method from stoichiometric melt with addition of 11mol%K 2 O and 19mol%K 2 O, respectively. Compared with the congruent melting LiNbO 3 , the ultraviolet absorption edges of two crystals shift towards shorter wavelengths, and the locations of the OH ‐ infrared absorption band have obvious change and the bandwidths become greatly narrower. From these experimental results, the Li 2 O contents are determined indirectly to be about 49.6mol% for SLN11 and 49.9mol% for SLN19, respectively. The Li 2 O content in SLN19 is very close to the ideal value of 50mol%. The coercive fields of two crystals were measured by the poling method at room temperature. A linear relationship between the Li 2 O content and the coercive field was fitted. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)