Research progress and prospects of rare-earth doped sesquioxide laser ceramics

Sesquioxide ceramics (Y2O3, Lu2O3 and Sc2O3) along with their solid solutions show great potential as hosts for solid-state laser gain materials due to their great suitability for various rare-earth ions, comparably physical properties to single crystals and far lower preparation temperature than the melting point (above 2400 °C). In this work, the development of the fabrication of rare-earth ions doped-sesquioxide ceramics like synthesis of raw nano-powders and ceramic sintering is reviewed, which demonstrates that the ceramics fabricated by vacuum sintering plus hot isostatic pressing technology from well-dispersive nano-powders possess high transparency with uniform microstructures. And the stable synthesis of powders, optical quality and large-scale preparation of ceramics need further investigation. Meanwhile, the progress on laser performance of the corresponding transparent ceramics is also summarized, which reveals that rare-earth active ions doped sesquioxide ceramics have great potential in efficient high power and ultrashort pulse laser applications during 1∼3 μm.