Journal of Crystal Growth, Vol.209, No.1, 75-80, 2000
Czochralski growth and structural investigations of La1-xNdxGaO3 solid solution single crystals
Growth of single crystals in the pseudobinary LaGaO3-NdGaO3 system by the Czochralski method was investigated. It was found that solid solution crystals La1 - xNdxGaO3 exist in the whole concentration range. The structure of the crystals was investigated by X-ray diffraction method. It was found that the unit cell volume decreases linearly with increasing Nd concentration in agreement with Vegard's law, With increasing Nd concentration x the lattice parameters a and c decrease, whereas b increases. At x = 0.32 parameters a and b become equal and the crystal adopts the pseudo-tetragonal structure, The differential thermal analysis proved that the temperature of the first-order phase transition observed in LaGaO3 at 150 degrees C rises linearly with Nd concentration at the rate of 20.5 degrees C/Nd mol% up to the melting temperature. The segregation coefficients of Nd in LaGaO3 and La in NdGaO3 have been found to be k(eff)(Nd) approximate to 0.77 and k(eff)(La) approximate to 1.3.
Keywords:crystal growth;solid solutions;perovskite-related structures;X-ray diffraction;differential thermal analyses