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Single-crystal fibers are an intermediate between laser crystals and doped glass fibers. They have the advantages of both guiding laser light and matching the efficiencies found in bulk crystals, which is making them ideal candidates for high-power laser and fiber laser applications. This work focuses on the growth of a flexible fiber with a core of dopant (Er, Nd, Yb, etc.) and a polycrystalline clad of yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) that will exhibit good wave guiding properties. Direct growth or a combination of growth and cladding experiments are described. Scattering loss measurements at visible wavelengths, along with dopant profile characterization with damage threshold results, are also presented. For single-pass amplification, a single-pass linear gain of 7.4 was obtained for 29 nJ pulses of 5 ns duration at 1 MHz repetition rate. We also obtained a laser efficiency of over 58% in a diode-pumped configuration. These results confirm the potential for single-crystal fibers to overcome the limitations of the glass fibers commonly used in fiber lasers, making them prime candidates for high-power compact fiber lasers and amplifiers.

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Bi 2 ZnB 2 O 7 (BZBO) fibers grown by the micro-pulling down technique (-PD) usually present a more or less pronounced color ranging from yellow to red and a microstructure showing glassy clear parts (more concentrated in bismuth) dispersed in a darker matrix. In a previous paper, we assumed a reaction between the platinum crucible and the melt to explain both their color and microstructure. To confirm or invalidate this hypothesis, BZBO fibers were pulled under different conditions by the -PD or laser heated pedestal growth(LHPG) techniques. Various physical characterizations methods such as: SEM, EDS microprobe, Raman micro-spectroscopy, DTA and X-ray diffraction were performed to evaluate their crystal quality. Finally, it appears that the origin of the observed features of the fibers grown lies in the evaporation of a substantial amount of boron oxidefrom the melt. This leads to a shift of its composition in the ZnO-B 2 O 3 -Bi 2 O 3 ternary system andan incongruent melting behavior. Therefore, the obtainment of colorless and transparent fibers requires very low pulling rates.

Single-crystal fibers of yttrium aluminum garnet could enable lasers with approximately 50 times more output power than those using conventional doped silica fibers.