New Ceramic Laser Hosts for High Power Lasers

Polycrystalline ceramics as laser gain hosts have several remarkable advantages over single crystal ones.  They can host a higher doping concentration, are much easier to be fabricated into larger and more complex shapes, which are extremely difficult in the single crystal case.  The costs of the ceramic laser materials could be much lower than those of single crystals because of the shortened fabrication process and large size, mass production.  Boston Applied Technologies Incorporated (BATi) proposes to develop highly desired high-power ceramic laser hosts via a co-precipitation nano-powder preparation and a fast sintering route for highly efficient formation of transparent ceramic laser hosts.  Our extensive experience in nano-phosphors, transparent ceramics, and combinatorial materials composition search will leverage a successful program for realizing the development of next-generation transparent ceramic laser host. BENEFIT: Highly efficient laser host formation method developed from this project would be enabling high power and low cost laser systems, which have tremendous strategic and commercial values for both military and civilian applications. These include remote-sensing applications, target recognition and detection, missile guidance illumination, measurements from airborne and space borne platforms, multiple wavelengths next-generation measurement systems, and industrial laser machining. The ceramic high power laser technology in this program, once developed, will not only serve DOD�s missions, but also be in the nation�s best interest.