Lithium Niobium oxide (Lithium Niobate)

Lithium niobate (LiNbO3) is a compound of niobium, lithium, and oxygen. Its single crystals are an important material for optical waveguides, mobile phones, piezoelectric sensors, optical modulators and various other linear and non-linear optical applications.

Physical Properties:

Chemical formula：LiNbO3

Molar mass： 147.846 g/mol

Appearance： colorless solid

Density： 4.65 g/cm3

Melting point： 1,257 °C (2,295 °F; 1,530 K)

Solubility in water：None

Band gap： 4 eV

Refractive index (nD)：no 2.30, ne 2.21

Crystal structure：trigonal

Applications:

Lithium niobate is used extensively in the telecoms market, e.g. in mobile telephones and optical modulators. It is the material of choice for the manufacture of surface acoustic wave devices. For some uses it can be replaced by lithium tantalate, LiTaO3. Other uses are in laser frequency doubling, nonlinear optics, Pockels cells, optical parametric oscillators, Q-switching devices for lasers, other acousto-optic devices, optical switches for gigahertz frequencies, etc. It is an excellent material for manufacture of optical waveguides. It’s also used in the making of optical spatial low-pass (anti-aliasing) filters.

In the past few years lithium niobate is finding applications as a kind of electrostatic tweezers, an approach known as optoelectronic tweezers as the effect requires light excitation to take place. This effect allows for fine manipulation of micrometer-scale particles with high flexibility since the tweezing action is constrained to the illuminated area. The effect is based on the very high electric fields generated during light exposure (1–100 kV/cm) within the illuminated spot. These intense fields are also finding applications in biophysics and biotechnology, as they can influence living organisms in a variety of ways. For example, iron-doped lithium niobate excited with visible light has been shown to produce cell death in tumoral cell cultures.