AbstractSingle crystals of cadmium sulfide and zinc sulfide have been grown and studied intensively by the Solid State Physics group at the Aeronautical Research Laboratory. The physical phenomena such as reflection, transmission, ultraviolet-excited emission, and electrical resistivity have been observed and characterized on single crystals of these sulfides. Much interest concerning these phenomena has also been centered on single crystals containing both cadmium sulfide and zinc sulfide.For research purposes, mixed crystals as small as a few tenths of 1 mg or less, to 0.5 g of the mixed sulfides, are being prepared. Special chemical methods are required to determine these constituents in them quantitatively. At times, these chemical methods are not applicable, since these methods invariably consume the sample, and, as a result, other observations on the same crystals cannot be performed.Changes in lattice parameter in single crystals of mixed sulfides as compared to pure zinc sulfide or cadmium sulfide provide excellent means for the determination of the percentage of these sulfides. In the X-ray method, single crystals used for the determination of the lattice parameters remain intact. The equipment adopted, procedure used, and the data obtained are illustrated and discussed.In the present study, crystals of cadmium sulfide (greenockite), alpha-zinc sulfide (wurtzite) and solid solutions of these two sulfides having a hexagonal unit cell were used. Since the lattice parameter a0 is found to follow Vegard's law, single-crystal rotation photographs described in this paper were obtained by rotating crystals around the c axis; the lattice parameter was determined with high precision by scanning along the zero-layer line with a microphotometer.
