“…To achieve this goal, researchers have made great efforts to synthesize powders with low degree of agglomerations, high sinterability by using the chemical co-precipitation, [18][19][20] ball milling, 21 and sol-gel combustion 22 processes. Meanwhile, translucent and transparent Nd-doped sesquioxide ceramics have been fabricated by using various sintering strategies: vacuum sintering, 21,23,24 H 2 atmosphere sintering, 19 hot pressing (HP), 25 hot isostatic pressing (HIP), 26 and spark plasma sintering (SPS). 27 29 Recently, using a Nd:Y 2 O 3 ceramic sample provided by our group, high efficiency CW lasing at ~1.08 and ~1.36 μm was reported, yielding the highest slope efficiency so far (49.6%).…”