Unidirectional seeded single crystal growth from solution of benzophenone

A novel crystal growth method has been established for the growth of single crystal with selective orientation at room temperature. Using volatile solvent, the saturated solution containing the material to be crystallized was taken in an ampoule and allowed to crystallize by slow solvent evaporation assisted with a ring heater. The orientation of the growing crystal was imposed by means of a seed fixed at the bottom of the ampoule. By selecting a suitable ring heater voltage and by controlling the ring heater voltage, nucleation and the growth rate of the crystal were controlled more effectively. By employing this novel method, benzophenone single crystal ingots of diameters 10 and 20 mm and length more than 50 mm were successfully grown using xylene as solvent. The ease in scaling up of diameter from 10 to 20 mm shows the vital advantage of this technique. It was possible to achieve solute-crystal conversion efficiency of 100 percent. The grown benzophenone crystal was characterized by FTIR, TG and DTA, powder X-ray diffraction, X-ray rocking curve, optical transmission study and powder SHG measurement. The results show that the crystal quality is at least as good as the quality of the crystal grown by other known methods. Also, microbial growth was naturally avoided in this method, as the fresh solution is constantly made available for the growing crystal.