Diffusion Bonded Crystals with High Damage Threshold

Non-Polarizing Cube Beamsplitters also called NPBS Cube is a more sophisticated type consisting of two right- angle prisms cemented together at their hypotenuse faces.The cemented face of one prism is coated. Before cementing, with a metallic or dielectric layer having the desired reflecting properties, both in the percentage of reflection and the desired color. The absorption loss to the coating is minimal and transmission and reflection could be designed to 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, etc.

Nd:YVO4 (Neodymium Doped Yttrium Orthovanadate) crystals is one of the most promising commercially available diode pumped solid state laser materials, especially, for low to middle power density. This is mainly for its higher absorption and emission features than Nd:YAG crystal. Pumped by laser diodes, Nd:YVO4 crystal has been incorporated with high NLO coefficient crystals ( LBO, BBO, or KTP) to frequency-shift the output from the near infrared to green, blue, or even UV. This incorporation to construct all solid state lasers is an ideal laser tool that can cover the most widespread applications of lasers, including machining, material processing, spectroscopy, wafer inspection, light displays, medical diagnostics, laser printing, and data storage, etc. It has been shown that Nd:YVO4 based diode pumped solid state lasers are rapidly occupying the markets traditionally dominated by water-cooled ion lasers and lamp-pumped lasers, especially when compact design and single-longitudinal-mode outputs are required.

Waveplates (retardation plates or phase shifters) are made from materials which exhibit birefringence. The velocities of the extraordinary and ordinary rays through the birefringent material varies inversely with their refractive indices. This difference in velocities gives rise to a phase difference when the two beams recombine.

HGO grows Nd:YLF laser crystals using Czochralski technology. Nd3+:YLF crystal is characterized by its long lifetime of 4F3/2 neodymium energy level. Compared to Nd:YAG, the lower thermal conductivity and a weak negative dn/dT lead to lower thermal distortions and allow to achieve a better output beam quality. Another distinctive feature is the high UV transparency, which is favorable for pumping with xenon flash lamps.

KDP Potassium Dihydrogen Phosphate and KD*P or DKDP Potassium Dideuterium Phosphate are among the most widely-used commercial NLO materials, characterized by good UV transmission, high damage threshold, and high birefringence, though their NLO coefficients are relatively low. They are usually used for doubling, tripling and quadrupling of a Nd:YAG laser under the room temperature. In addition, they are also excellent electro-optic crystals with high electro-optic coefficients, widely used as electro-optical modulators, such as Q-switches, Pockels Cells, etc.

Achromatic Lenses are used to minimize or eliminate chromatic aberration. The achromatic design also helps minimize spherical aberrations. Achromatic Lenses are ideal for a range of applications, including fluorescence microscopy, image relay, inspection, or spectroscopy. Achromatic Lenses, which are often designed by either cementing two elements together or mounting the two elements in a housing, create smaller spot sizes than comparable singlet lenses.

Ti:Sapphire crystal is the most widely used tunable solid-state laser material combining the supreme physical and optical properties with the extremely broad lasing range. Its lasing bandwidth can support pulses < 10fs making it the crystal of choice for femtosecond mode-locked oscillators and amplifiers. The absorption band of Ti:Sapphire centers at ~ 490 nm so it may be conveniently pumped by various laser sources such as argon ion lasers or frequency doubled Nd:YAG, Nd:YLF, Nd:YVO4 lasers at ~530nm. Laser designers are using Ti:sapphire to generate femtosecond pulses to create new industrial tools. A properly delivered femtosecond laser pulse interacts within the target leaving the surrounding area undisturbed. Newly developed femtosecond pulsed lasers micro-machine complex fine structures in glass, metal and other materials. Active waveguides can be written below the surface, integrating optical devices within the body of a substrate. Defects in photomasks can be repaired without disturbing neighbouring patterns. And it is now possible to achieve cellular resolution in vivo for medical diagnosis with femtosecond pulse lasers.

α-BBO (α-BaB2O4) is a negative uniaxial crystal which has large birefringence over a broad transparent range of 190nm to 3500nm. α-BBO is an excellent crystal especially in UV and high power applications. The physical, chemical, thermal, and optical properties of alpha-BBO crystal are similar to those of Beta-BBO. However, there is no second order nonlinear effect in alpha-BBO crystal due to the centrosymmetry in its crystal structure and thus it has no use for second order nonlinear optical processes. Instead, alpha-BBO is widely used for fabrication of polarizers, polarizing beam displacers, phase retarders, birefringent plates, and time delay compensators especially those for UV and high power lasers.