Potassium Chloride - Physical Properties

Physical Properties

Potassium chloride has a crystalline structure like many other salts. Its structure is face-centered cubic. Its lattice constant is roughly 6.3Å. Some other properties are

• Transmission range: 210 nm to 20 µm
• Transmittivity = 92% at 450 nm and rises linearly to 94% at 16 µm
• Refractive index = 1.456 at 10 µm
• Reflection Loss = 6.8% at 10 µm (two surfaces)
• dN/dT (expansion coefficient)= −33.2×10−6/°C
• dL/dT (refractive index gradient)= 40×10−6/°C
• Thermal conductivity = 0.036 W/(cm·K)
• Damage threshold (Newman & Novak): 4 GW/cm2 or 2 J/cm2 (0.5 or 1 ns pulse rate); 4.2 J/cm2 (1.7 ns pulse rate Kovalev & Faizullov)