Nucleation studies of ZTC doped with l-arginine in supersaturated aqueous solutions

The metastable zonewidth studies are carried out for various temperatures for supersaturated aqueous solutions of zinc thiourea chloride added with 1 mole % of l-arginine. The metastable zonewidth is increased with the addition of l-arginine. The induction period is experimentally determined and various critical nucleation parameters such as radius of critical nucleus, number of molecules in the critical nucleus, critical free energy of nucleus and interfacial tension are also calculated based on the classical theory for homogeneous crystal nucleation. The induction period is increased with the increase of l-arginine addition. The critical nucleation parameters vary with increase in doping concentration. It is also observed that the nucleation rate increases with the increase of supersaturation. The second harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency measurements are carried out with different doping concentration of l-arginine reveal that nonlinear optical (NLO) property is enhanced by l-arginine dopant.