Royal Society of Chemistry, CrystEngComm, 46(15), p. 10034, 2013
DOI: 10.1039/c3ce41397g
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Abstract Sulphamic acid (HSO3NH2) is a potential material which exhibits excellent piezoelectric and non-linear optical properties. Nucleation and growth kinetics gives valuable information about the crystal growth process, which can be employed in the growth of large size crystals. Thus we have studied its nucleation parameters such as solubility, metastable zone width, induction period, interfacial tension, critical free energy, volume free energy change, critical nucleus and found that good quality sulphamic acid crystal can be grown at low temperature. Growth of good quality crystal was done by adopting slow evaporation solution growth technique at room temperature and as a result, good quality single crystal was grown. The grown bulk single crystal of the titled compound was subjected to various characterization analyses. Its unit cell dimensions were confirmed using powder X-ray Diffraction. Further its crystalline perfection was assessed using High Resolution X-ray Diffraction and X-Ray Topography techniques and found that it is reasonably good. Its various functional groups were identified from Fourier Transform-Raman method. The nanoindentation was performed to identify the load dependence and independence of hardness (H) and Young's modulus (E) using Oliver-Pharr method and found that both H and E exhibits peak load dependence. Photopyroelectric study was performed to identify its thermal properties such as thermal diffusivity ([small alpha]), thermal conductivity (k), thermal effusivity (e), and heat capacity (cp). These studies reveals that it has high thermal stability compared to other single crystals. Optical homogeneity of grown crystal was assessed using birefringence interferometer and found that it is reasonably good.