Growth of Fluoride Single Crystals for UV Solid-State Tunable Laser Applications

摘要

Fluoride single crystals are of particular importance for many applications, such as instruments for medical procedures, semiconductor processing, optical communications and remote sensing, since they can provide coherent optical sources in the UV wavelength region. Ce~(3+)-doped high quality LiCaAlF_6 (LiCAF) crystals of 1 inch in diameter have been grown for UV laser application, by the Czochralski technique~([1]). But in the case of 2 inch size Ce:LiCAF crystals, it was difficult to grow a good crystal, because it was easy for many inclusions and cracks to appear. In this work, we have grown 2 inch size Ce:LiCAF single crystals by the Czochralski(CZ) technique for the applications of a UV solid-state tunable laser.