Nucleation Controlled Growth of Cadmium Oxalate Crystals in Agar Gel and Their Characterization

Perfect single crystals of cadmium oxalate have been grown using the slow and controlled reaction between cadmium acetate and oxalic acid in agar gel media at ambient temperature, resulting in the formation of insoluble product Cd(COO)2. Different methods for growing crystals were adopted. The optimum conditions were employed in each method by varying the concentration of gel and reactants, gel setting time, and so forth. Prismatic, transparent single crystal about 20 times larger than the crystals obtained in various other methods at the interstitial by adding impurities in the gel was obtained. The grown crystals was characterized with the help of FT-IR studies and triclinic system of crystals were supported with lattice parameters a = 8.803 A0, b = 22.352 A0, c = 5.706 A0, α = 95.74 A0, β = 90.92 A0, γ = 117.01 A0, and V = 994.69 , calculated from X-ray diffractogram. 1. Introduction Crystal growth in gel is an inexpensive and simple technique for growing single crystals for certain class of materials like alkaline earth metal oxalates [1] and transition metal oxalates [2], because of their low solubility in water [3] and they decompose before melting point [4]. Nowadays many researchers are taking interest in the study of inorganic oxalates due to their applications in analytical chemistry and in industries [5]. Oxalate materials have very wide spectrum for the research topics. It requires deep involvement of both chemist and solid state physicist. These materials have attracted the study of optical properties because of their potential applications in optoelectronics. Inorganic semiconductors stand on the threshold of a bright and exciting future. The synthesis of organic semiconductor has more demand than the inorganic semiconductor materials in electronic industries [6]. Increasing number of studies in the field of mixed-ligand complex formation using cadmium oxalate has appeared during the past decade [7]. The metal di-carboxylate like cadmium oxalate is fairly suitable as a stabilizer [8, 9] of PVC. A study of magnetic behavior of solid gives valuable information about their use as an insulator and for various other mechanical and electrical properties. The magnetic susceptibility provides information [10, 11] on magnetic moment. Ionic crystals [12–15] have interesting features regarding indirect band-to-band transitions. There are not many efforts in the literature, on the growth of cadmium oxalate, by using agar gel method except Chauhan and Arora [16] and Chauhan [17]. However Raj et al. have obtained crystallization in silica gel [17].