Effect of annealing on the properties of CTAB assisted lead tungstate

•Low cost growth of popcorn-like single crystalline PbWO4 by the precipitation method.•XRD investigation confirms the pure phase of single crystalline PbWO4.•SEM and TEM investigations confirm the popcorn-like morphology of the PbWO4.

The popcorn shaped lead tungstate were synthesized at room temperature using precipitation method with cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB). The grown samples were further annealed at 550 °C and used for investigations of their structural, morphological and optical studies by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). XRD and SEM results revealed that the lattice distortions of PbWO4 reduced significantly when annealing temperature increased to 550 °C and these results were supported by Photoluminescence (PL) and Raman spectroscopic studies.