Growth, structural and optical studies of chromium doped KTiOPO4 single crystals

KTiOPO4 single crystals doped with trivalent impurity ions of chromium were grown by spontaneous nucleation and seeded growth techniques. Structural refinement performed on the grown crystals by single crystal X-ray diffraction technique reveals that chromium ions occupy both the potassium sites with different filling coefficients. Incorporation of Cr3+ causes the absorption edge in the UV spectrum to shift towards the lower energy. The dependence of optical absorption coefficient with the incident photon energy in the UV-VIS region has been discussed. Optical and SEM studies indicate the existence of two-dimensional nucleation mechanisms