Near-Zero Thermal Expansion and High Ultraviolet Transparency in a Borate Crystal of Zn4 B6 O13

Xingxing Jiang; Maxim S Molokeev; Pifu Gong; Yi Yang; Wei Wang; Shuaihua Wang; Shaofan Wu; Yingxia Wang; Rongjin Huang; Laifeng Li; Yicheng Wu; Xianran Xing; Zheshuai Lin

doi:10.1002/adma.201601816

Near-Zero Thermal Expansion and High Ultraviolet Transparency in a Borate Crystal of Zn₄ B₆ O₁₃

Adv Mater. 2016 Sep;28(36):7936-7940. doi: 10.1002/adma.201601816. Epub 2016 Jul 4.

Authors

Xingxing Jiang^{1

2}, Maxim S Molokeev^{3

4}, Pifu Gong^{1

2}, Yi Yang^{1

2}, Wei Wang⁵, Shuaihua Wang⁶, Shaofan Wu⁶, Yingxia Wang⁷, Rongjin Huang⁵, Laifeng Li⁵, Yicheng Wu¹, Xianran Xing⁸, Zheshuai Lin^{9

10}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Crystal R&D, Key Lab of Functional Crystals and Laser Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
³ Laboratory of Crystal Physics, Kirensky Institute of Physics, SB RAS, Krasnoyarsk, 660036, Russia.
⁴ Department of Physics, Far Eastern State Transport University, Khabarovsk, 680021, Russia.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁶ Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian, 350002, China.
⁷ State Key Laboratory for Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
⁸ Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China. xing@ustb.edu.cn.
⁹ Center for Crystal R&D, Key Lab of Functional Crystals and Laser Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. zslin@mail.ipc.ac.cn.
¹⁰ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China. zslin@mail.ipc.ac.cn.

PMID: 27376511
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201601816

Abstract

Intrinsic isotropic near-zero thermal expansion is discovered in borate crystal Zn₄ B₆ O₁₃ with high transparency in the ultraviolet region. First-principles calculations demonstrate that the very low thermal expansion originates mainly from the invariability of the solid [B₂₄ O₄₈ ] truncated octahedra that are fixed by the [Zn₄ O₁₃ ] clusters in the ZBO structure.

Keywords: borate crystals; high ultraviolet transparency; near-zero thermal expansion; sodalite cage structure.