Growth of anthracene crystals by gel aided solution technique

Abstract

Anthracene (C14H10) is one of the organic molecular crystals which exhibits peculiar optical and electronic properties. It forms colourless monoclinic prismatic crystals with melting point 218 °C in the space group C25 - P21/a having unit cell dimensions a = 0.856, b = 0.604, c = 1.116 nm, α = 90°, β = 124 and γ = 90 (SILINSH, 1960). Each unit cell has two molecules and a well defined cleavage plane, the ab plane. The volume of the unit cell is about 0.4742 nm3 with 188 electrons per unit cell. Attempts haw been made to grow angle crystals of anthracene long back (ROSS, 1950, METTE and PICK 1953. LIPPSETT, 1957, ROBINSON and SCOTT, 1967, PRASAD, 1989). However, the crystals obtained were not of high quality. Here, we report the growth of well-foceted anthracene crystals by gel aided solution technique (RAJENDRA BABU et al., 1997).