Long-Time Relaxation of Stress-Induced Birefringence of Microcrystalline Alkali Halide Crystals.

Alkali halide single crystals are most commonly used as the diluent matrix in the tablet method or disk technique for spectroscopic measurements. However, stress-induced birefringence (SIB) of alkali halides as well as intrinsic birefringence manifest during the disk formation process. Thus, the true chiroptical measurement is disturbed by optical anisotropies (OA) containing SIB and intrinsic birefringence, except in the case of optical homogeneity.