High Transparency Nd: Y₂O₃ Ceramics Prepared with La₂O₃ and ZrO₂ Additives

Abstract

High transparency Nd: Y2O3 ceramics were prepared by vacuum sintering with La2O3 and ZrO2 sintering additives. The optimum in‐line transmittance of the sintered Nd: Y2O3 is 80.98% at the wavelength of 1100 nm, for which the content of La2O3 and ZrO2 are 10.0 and 3.0 at.%, respectively. This specimen demonstrates homogeneous microstructure with the average grain size of 8.3 μm. The mechanism of sintering with La2O3 and ZrO2 aids and the optical properties was discussed. The absorption, emission cross section, and fluorescence lifetime have been estimated as 1.62 × 10−20 cm2, 5.13 × 10−20 cm2, and 232 μs, respectively. Vickers hardness and the fracture toughness were measured of 9.18 GPa and 1.03 Mpa·m1/2, respectively. All the results indicate that Nd: Y2O3 transparent ceramic is a promising candidate for laser material.

High-Resolution Optical Line Width Measurements as a Material Characterization Tool

“…1 As can be seen in Table 1, the inhomogeneous linewidths of ceramic samples without the additive ZrO 2 are narrow; comparable to the inhomogeneous linewidths obtained for pedestal grown fiber crystals 13 and not much broader than for high-quality single crystals. 18 The addition of ZrO 2 , which is usually applied to obtain higher degrees of transparency, 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 GHz was found and can be attributed to possible small variations of the annealing process (also see Discussion). GHz of the total linewidth of 12 GHz.…”

Fabrication of transparent La-doped Y2O3 ceramics using different La2O3 precursors

“…Owing to their low infrared emissivity at both ambient and elevated temperatures, Y 2 O 3 ceramics are considered as a candidate material for use in hypersonic guided-missile windows and domes [4][5][6][7]. The use of La 2 O 3 permits the attainment of ceramics with high optical quality and good mechanical properties by eliminating pores and inhibiting grain growth during the Y 2 O 3 ceramic sintering process [8][9][10]. However, La 2 O 3 rapidly absorbs moisture and carbon dioxide from air to form hydroxides and hydroxycarbonates [11,12], which makes it more difficult to maintain an exact weight during the weighing process.…”

Rare-earth doped transparent ceramics for spectral filtering and quantum information processing

“…Such a low absorption would make spectral filtering or quantum storage rather inefficient. A lower level or different additives 23 could lead to a better compromise between transparency and absorption.…”

“…% ZrO 2 was added to some samples in order to reach higher transparency, as in ceramics used as laser gain media. 23 Grain sizes were determined by optical microscopy. An average grain size of about 2 µm was observed at the center of all ceramics where the optical measurements were carried out.…”