The growth of high quality quartz in heavy water

Hydrogen and alkali ions introduced by the growth environment are the main interstitial impurities found in cultured quartz. As-grown cultured quartz has a set of "growth-defects" which trap hydrogen and cause four OH infrared bands (GD-OH). Their room-temperature infrared absorption is commonly used to grade cultured quartz. The aluminum concentration and, consequently, the alkali concentration can be reduced to a very low level by careful growth from high-purity nutrient A quartz growth programme using D₂O was planned to produce a stock of high quality quartz for basic studies in which the hydrogen had been replaced by deuterium. We report the growth of high purity quartz using a sodium carbonate mineraliser dissolved in 99.9% purity D₂O. Dislocation densities of about 1/cm were achieved in all runs by using Z-cut seeds derived from the fast-X sector of a large synthetic crystal. Chemical analysis gave typical aluminum concentrations of 0.03 μmole/mole. Low-temperature FTIR spectra were taken on Z-cut test samples in the as-grown condition and after being swept in hydrogen. Only the deuterium versions of the four GD-OH bands were present in the as-grown samples. The GD-OD concentration of about 0.8 μmole/mole was found for the final slow growth samples.