Fabrication and properties of novel composite laser ceramics with a surface-gain structure

To suppress heat effects in a high-power laser system, it has been proposed to use a few composite laser gain media to improve the heat management ability. The surface-gain structure has the advantages of both slab and thin-disk configurations, which has huge potential in high-power laser. For the first time, novel composite laser ceramics with surface-gain structure have been fabricated by tape casting and sintering technology. The in-line transmittances of surface-gain ceramics in 1100 and 400 nm are 83.5% and 79.1%, respectively. According to the laser ablation–coupled plasma mass spectrometry, the diffusion distance of Yb 3+ is about 150 µm. The laser experiment yields a low repetition rate pulse of 1.9 J with a pump absorption energy of 11 J and an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 17.2%.