RESUMEN
Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) is used to establish the role of iodine as an electron trap in tin hypothiodiphosphate (Sn2P2S6) crystals. Iodine ions are unintentionally incorporated when the crystals are grown by the chemical-vapor-transport method with SnI4 as the transport agent. The Sn2P2S6 crystals consist of Sn2+ ions and (P2S6)4- anionic groups. During growth, an iodine ion replaces a phosphorus in a few of the anionic groups, thus forming (IPS6)4- molecular ions. Following an exposure at low temperature to 633 nm laser light, these (IPS6)4- ions trap an electron and convert to EPR-active (IPS6)5- groups with S = 1/2. A concentration near 1.1 × 1017 cm-3 is produced. The EPR spectrum from the (IPS6)5- ions has well-resolved structure resulting from large hyperfine interactions with the 127I and 31P nuclei. Analysis of the angular dependence of the spectrum gives principal values of 1.9795, 2.0123, and 2.0581 for the g matrix, 232 MHz, 263 MHz, and 663 MHz for the 127I hyperfine matrix, and 1507 MHz, 1803 MHz, and 1997 MHz for the 31P hyperfine matrix. Results from quantum-chemistry modeling (unrestricted Hartree-Fock/second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory) support the (IPS6)5- assignment for the EPR spectrum. The transient two-beam coupling gain can be improved in these photorefractive Sn2P2S6 crystals by better controlling the point defects that trap charge.
RESUMEN
Density functional theory is used to establish the ground-state structure of the self-trapped hole (STH) in KH2PO4 crystals. The STHs in this nonlinear optical material are free small polarons, a fundamental intrinsic point defect. They are produced with ionizing radiation in the low-temperature orthorhombic structure of KH2PO4 and are only stable (i.e. long-lived) below approximately 70 K. A large 129-atom cluster, K19H40P14O56, is constructed to model the STH. The ωB97XD functional with the 6-31+G* basis set is used and geometry optimization is performed. Our results show that two of the oxygen ions in a PO4 unit relax toward each other and equally share the hole. These two oxygen ions do not initially have close hydrogen neighbors. This equal sharing of the hole is related to the presence of isolated, slightly distorted, PO4 units and is significantly different from the small-polaron behavior often observed in other oxide crystals where the hole is localized on only one oxygen ion. The computational results provide a detailed description of the lattice relaxation occurring during formation of the STH. Characteristic spectral features of this defect are a larger hyperfine interaction with one 31P nucleus and equal, but smaller, hyperfine interactions with two 1H nuclei. The computed values for these isotropic and anisotropic hyperfine coupling constants are in excellent agreement with results obtained from electron paramagnetic resonance experiments.