Growth of highly doped Nd:YAG laser crystals

During the last decade, Nd:YVO 4 has been developed as a promising substitutes for Nd:YAG in diode-pumped lasers due to its high absorption and emission cross-sections. However, the applications of YVO 4 are limited due to its poor physical- mechanical properties and growth difficulty etc. Now, in this present paper, we have developed the high-doped Nd:YAG(SUPER- Nd:YAG) crystals. It shows high absorption cross-section and has many advantages over Nd:YVO 4 : (1) Due to the cubic symmetry and high quality, Nd:YAG is easy to operate with TEM 00 mode. (2) Nd:YAG can be Q-switched with Cr 4+ :YAG directly (sandwich). (3) Nd:YAG can produce blue laser with the frequency-doubling of 946 nm. (4) Nd:YAG can be operated in a very high power laser up to kW level.