| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T24: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Solid-state Optical Materials and Luminescence Properties
|
| Presentation Title |
Fabrication of SrF2 Polycrystalline Transparent Ceramic with High Optical Quality for High-Energy Laser Gain Media |
| Author(s) |
Thomas Rudzik, Zachary Seeley, Nerine Cherepy, Stephen Payne |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Thomas Rudzik |
| Abstract Scope |
SrF2 has the potential to improve upon the energy storage, beam distortion, shot rate, and pumping requirements in comparison to the phosphate glass currently used for high-energy laser gain media. Polycrystalline transparent ceramic SrF2 could enable fabrication of large optics and greater control of doping than single crystals, but their successful implementation has been hindered thus far due to the difficulty in achieving sufficient optical quality. In this work, we report the first polycrystalline ceramic SrF2 with reproducible optical scatter below ~0.2%/cm (measured at 1.3µm) for samples with 18mm diameter and 10mm thickness. It was found that the purity of the powder feedstock was critical to enable low optical scatter, and thus a fabrication methodology was developed to achieve the reported results. Samples were fabricated from these powders in a single step via hot pressing. Geometric scaleup and further reduction in scatter are being pursued. |