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Strengthening of very large crystalline and polycrystalline Nd:YAG rods for high-power laser applications

  • Ceramics
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Abstract

A multistep thermochemical etching procedure was applied to very large Nd3+:YAG rods to increase their fracture strength. The strengthening procedure combined selection of high-quality material, fine centerless grinding, thermochemical etching, and (after completion of the lapping, polishing and AR coating) an additional hot thermochemical etching, with rod ends protected with poly-tetra-fluoro-ethylene (Teflon) caps. The final cleaning step, not previously reported, is essential in removing fracture causing contaminations on the rod surface. A unique thermal load-to-fracture technique was applied on test rods to measure their fracture strength. The rods were thermally loaded up to fracture by means of optical pumping in a specially designed laser pump chamber. The results thus obtained were analyzed by Weibull distribution statistics appropriate to these tests. The strengthened laser rods of this study sustained a maximum pump power density of \( I_{{\ell_{\hbox{max} } }} \) = 500 W cm−1. This value is higher by a factor of four over untreated rods and also higher than any previously published data for such large rods. High-power diode-pumped laser heads were operated with the strengthened crystalline and polycrystalline Nd:YAG rods, yielded output power of ~ 3 kW, when pumped with 7 kW. Such performance was routinely achieved without any instance of rod fracture. Reliability of the strengthening procedure was further demonstrated by the failure-free operation of an azimuthally polarized high-power master-oscillator power-amplifier system (composed of oscillator, preamplifier, and six power amplifiers), emitting an output power in excess of 10 kW.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Physics Division, Soreq NRC, 81800, Yavne, Israel

    Revital Feldman, Steven Jackel, Inon Moshe, Avi Meir, Eyal Lebiush, Zvi Horowitz, Yaakov Lumer & Yehoshua Shimony

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  1. Revital Feldman
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  2. Steven Jackel
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  3. Inon Moshe
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  4. Avi Meir
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  5. Eyal Lebiush
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  6. Zvi Horowitz
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  7. Yaakov Lumer
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  8. Yehoshua Shimony
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Correspondence to Revital Feldman.

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Conflict of interest

The work presented in this publication has been carried out for few years in Soreq Nuclear Research Center, Yavne, Israel, as an Infrastructure Development Program for solid-state lasers without any external funding. All authors of the present publications declare that they have no conflict of interest with respect to this publication.

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Feldman, R., Jackel, S., Moshe, I. et al. Strengthening of very large crystalline and polycrystalline Nd:YAG rods for high-power laser applications. J Mater Sci 54, 6772–6785 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03340-y

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