Ceramic Laser Materials

Transparent ceramic materials have several major advantages over single crystals in laser applications, not the least of which is the ability to make large aperture parts in a robust manufacturing process. After more than a decade of working on making transparent YAG:Nd, Japanese workers have recently succeeded in demonstrating samples that performed as laser gain media as well as their single crystal counterparts. Since then several laser materials have been made and evaluated. For these reasons, developing ceramic laser materials is the most exciting and futuristic materials topic in today's major solid-state laser conferences. We have established a good working relationship with Konoshima Ltd., the Japanese producer of the best ceramic laser materials, and have procured and evaluated slabs designed by us for use in our high-powered SSHCL. Our measurements indicate that these materials will work in the SSHCL, and we have nearly completed retrofitting the SSHCL with four of the largest transparent ceramic YAG:Nd slabs in existence. We have also begun our own effort to make this material and have produced samples with various degrees of transparency/translucency. We are in the process of carrying out an extensive design-of-experiments to establish the significant process variables for making transparent YAG. Finally because transparent ceramics afford much greater flexibility in the design of lasers, we have been exploring the potential for much larger apertures, new materials, for example for the Mercury laser, other designs for SSHL, such as, edge pumping designs, slabs with built in ASE suppression, etc. This work has just beginning.