Flux Growth of Phosphide and Arsenide Crystals

Abstract

Flux crystal growth has been widely applied to explore new phases and grow crystals of emerging materials. To accommodate the needs of high-quality single crystals, the flux crystal growth should be reliable, controllable, and predictable. The selections of suitable flux and growth conditions remain empirical due to the lack of systematic investigation especially for reactions, which involve highly volatile components, such as P and As. Considering the flux elements, often the system in question is a quaternary or a higher multinary system, which drastically increases complexity. In this manuscript, on the examples of flux growth of phosphides and arsenides, guidelines of flux selections, existing challenges, and future directions are discussed. We expect that the field will be further developed by applying in situ techniques and computational modeling of the nucleation and growth kinetics. Additionally, leveraging variables other than temperature, such as applied pressure, will make flux growth a more powerful tool in the future.

Crystallographic facet selective HER catalysis: exemplified in FeP and NiP2 single crystals

“…In the ux crystal growth, controllable nucleation and growth are hard to achieve, 25 and spontaneous crystallization leads to growth of crystals of different shapes with different large facets ( Fig. 1).…”

Synthesis and Manipulation of Single-Crystalline Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide Cathodes: A Review of Growth Mechanism

“…In the past, the closed holder containing the liquid/solid reactive materials at high temperatures has hidden the details of the growth process and left puzzles of morphology variation. The recent advances on in situ transmission electron microscopy and neutron diffraction methods can help interrogate the key factors that influence single-crystalline NMC growth (Shoemaker et al, 2014 ; Vasquez et al, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2020a ), and theoretical computations of surface energies and their variations in different environments would guide an efficient manipulation of crystal morphology.…”

“…After nucleation, the crystal growth in the molten flux is subject to mass transportation and the Ostwald ripening process. The holding temperature, solute concentration, and reaction time are key factors that influence the single-crystalline NMC products in the flux growth method (Wang et al, 2020a ).…”

Topological Quantum Materials from the Viewpoint of Chemistry

“…Hence, methods such as the Bridgman and OFZ techniques are ruled out. Moreover, using the flux method for growing large high quality phosphides and arsenides has shown limited success 146 . The quality of single crystals grown by CVT has profound role in establishing the topological properties of the materials.…”