Abstract
It is shown that planar strain fields in potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) single crystals, can be made visible as macroscopic etch grooves by etching polished {100}, {101} and {001} slices. These planar strain fields are due to inhomogeneous impurity distributions in the crystal, for instance at the boundary of two growth sectors with different impurity contents or at the boundaries of the growth bands within a single growth sector. The sensitivity of this method is similar as for X-ray diffraction topography, but by etching a higher resolution (less than 1μm) can be obtained. The formation of the etch grooves and the increasing sensitivity of the etch method for the {100}, {101} and {001} plates successively is explained analogous to the thermodynamic dislocation theory of dissolution of crystals as formulated by Cabrera and Levine, combined with a consideration of some nucleation models for the initial opening up of the groove.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 607-623 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Crystal Growth |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 1981 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:thankful to Professor P. Bennema, Dr. J.P. van der Eerden and Ir. B. van der Hoek for stimulating discussions and critical reading of the manuscript. One of us (W.J.P. van Enckevort) acknowledges the support of the Netherlands Foundation for Pure Research, ZWO/ SON.