Chemical analysis coupled with the inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy is proposed as a suitable method for determination of the phase heterogeneity of bulk ZnGeP(2) crystals, which are excellent materials for non-linear infrared technique. The crystal phase heterogeneity is resulting from impurity phases ZnP(2) or Ge, which are undetectable by traditional x-ray diffraction method because of their low content. The precise analytical procedure was developed using a well characterized homogeneous ZnGeP(2) crystal as a standard reference material to analyze a series of bulk ZnGeP(2) crystals with a low content of ZnP(2) or Ge. In this case, all static (instrumental and methodical) errors of the analysis were corrected, and dispersion of the analytical results (random errors) for crystals tested was related to a spatial variation of the impurity phase content and its irregular distribution. The spread of the analytical results found for 15 independent weights of each test crystal is demonstrated graphically.
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