Hydrogen effect on the properties of sapphire

Abstract

Sapphire is a widely used material for optical, electronic and semiconductor applications due to its excellent optical properties and very high durability. Optical and mechanical properties of sapphire depend on many factors such as the starting materials that are used to grow crystals, methods to grow sapphire crystals, etc. Demand for highest purity and quality of sapphire crystals increased ten fold for the last several years due to new applications for this material. In this work we studied the effect of starting materials and crystal growth methods on the optical and mechanical properties of sapphire, especially concentrating on the effect of hydrogen on the properties of sapphire. It was found that the infrared (IR) absorption which is traditionally used to measure the hydrogen content in sapphire crystals cannot be reliably used and the data obtained by this method provides a much lower hydrogen concentration than actual. We have shown for the first time that Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques can be successfully used to determine hydrogen concentration in sapphire crystals. We have shown that hydrogen concentration in sapphire can reach thousands of ppm if these crystals are grown from Verneuil starting material or aluminum oxide powder. Alternatively, the hydrogen concentration is very low if sapphire crystals are grown from High Purity Densified Alumina (HPDA ®) as a starting material. HPDA ® is produced by EMT, Inc through their proprietary patented technology. It was found that optical and mechanical properties of sapphire crystals grown using EMT HPDA ® starting material are much better than those sapphire crystals grown using a starting material of Verneuil crystals or aluminum oxide powder.