Crystals and optics processing services

Corner Cube Prism also called Retroreflector.It has three mutually perpendicular surfaces and a hypotenuse face. Light entering through the hypotenuse is reflected by each of the three surfaces in turn and will emerge through the hypotenuse face parallel to the entering beam regardless of the orientation of the incident beam. For its special performance, it is often used to the distance measurement, optical signal process and laser.

Sapphire window retains its high strength at high temperatures, has good thermal properties and excellent transparency. It is chemically resistant to common acids and alkali at temperatures up to 1000 °C as well as to HF below 300 °C. These properties encourage its wide use in hostile environments where optical transmission in the range from the vacuum ultraviolet to the near infrared is required.

HGO grows BBO Nonlinear crystals using flux technology. BBO crystal transparency ranges from 188 nm to 5,2 µm, which includes reasonable transparency from 3-5,2 µm for few tens µm thick crystals, while their phase-matchable range spans almost over the entire transparency range. Combined with other magnificent properties of BBO, it is favorable for numerous nonlinear parametric applications. It is worth to mention that BBO crystals have the highest nonlinearity in the UV range out of all common nonlinear crystals.

YbYAG crystal is more suitable for diode-pumping than the traditional Nd-doped systems. It can be pumped at 0.94 μm laser output. Compared with the commonly used Nd:YAG crystal, Yb:YAG crystal has a much larger absorption bandwidth to reduce thermal management requirements for diode lasers, a longer upper-state lifetime, three to four times lower thermal loading per unit pump power. Yb:YAG crystal is expected to replace Nd:YAG crystal for high power diode-pumped lasers and other potential applications.

HGO grows Ho:YLF laser crystals using Czochralski technology. Ho:YLF is a very attractive laser material, because the lifetime of the upper laser level is much longer ( ~ 14 ms) than in Ho:YAG and the emission cross sections are higher. Additionally the thermal lens in Ho:YLF is much weaker, which helps to generate diffraction limited beams even under intense end-pumping. The primary advantage of directly pumping the Ho 5I7 is that it does not have to depend on energy transfer, which lends itself to various radiative and non-radiative losses. Up-conversion losses that have deleterious effect in high-energy Q-switched lasers are eliminated.

A cylindrical lens is a lens that focuses light on a line instead of a point, like a spherical lens. The curved face or faces of a cylindrical lens are sections of a cylinder, and focus the image passing through it into a line parallel to the intersection of the surface of the lens and a plane tangent to it. The lens compresses the image in the direction perpendicular to this line and leaves it unaltered in the direction parallel to it (in the tangent plane). In a light sheet microscope, a cylindrical lens is placed in front of the illumination objective to create the light sheet used for imaging. Cylindrical lenses focus or expand light in one axis only. They can be used to focus light into a thin line in optical metrology, laser scanning, spectroscopic, laser diode, acousto-optic, and optical processor applications. They can also be used to expand the output of a laser diode into a symmetrical beam. Cylindrical lenses are widely used in telecom applications like WSS, 40G/100G modules and laser applications like pump laser modules

Pure YAG Yttrium Aluminum Garnet is a new substrate and window material that can be used for both UV and IR optics. It is particularly useful for high-temperature and high-energy applications. The mechanical and chemical stability of YAG is comparable to sapphire crystal, but YAG is unique with no birefringence which is extremely important for some optical applications.

Cr4+:YAG (Y3Al5O12) crystal is ideal for passive Q-switch operation of Nd:YAG and other Nd3+ or Yb3+ doped laser crystals in the wavelength range of 900 nm to 1200 nm. Passive Q-switches or saturable absorbers provide high power laser pulses without electro-optic Q-switches, thereby reducing the package size and eliminating a high voltage power supply. A remarkable feature of Cr4+:YAG is the high damage threshold of >10 J/cm2@1064 nm, 10 ns. Its absorption band extends from 900 nm to 1200 nm and peaks around 1060 nm with a very large absorption cross-section.