High doping Nd:YAG transparent ceramics fabricated by solid‐state reactive sintering

Abstract Nd:YAG transparent ceramics with different doping concentrations were fabricated by a solid‐state reaction method and vacuum sintering. Powder mixture of α‐Al 2 O 3 , Y 2 O 3 , and Nd 2 O 3 doped with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and MgO were sintered between 1500 o C and 1750 o C to examine the densification behavior in Nd:YAG ceramics. For the high doping 5 at%Nd:YAG transparent ceramics, the sintering kinetics and microstructure evolution were mainly discussed. It is found that the optimal sintering temperature for 5.0 at%Nd:YAG ceramics was at ∼1700 o C, and the in‐line transmittance increased with the increase of holding time. The best specimen with the holding time of 30h achieved 82.2% in transmittance at 1064nm, whose average grain size was ∼15μm. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)