Crystals and optics processing services

Nd:YVO4 (Neodymium Doped Yttrium Orthovanadate) crystals is one of the most promising commercially available diode pumped solid state laser materials, especially, for low to middle power density. This is mainly for its higher absorption and emission features than Nd:YAG crystal. Pumped by laser diodes, Nd:YVO4 crystal has been incorporated with high NLO coefficient crystals ( LBO, BBO, or KTP) to frequency-shift the output from the near infrared to green, blue, or even UV. This incorporation to construct all solid state lasers is an ideal laser tool that can cover the most widespread applications of lasers, including machining, material processing, spectroscopy, wafer inspection, light displays, medical diagnostics, laser printing, and data storage, etc. It has been shown that Nd:YVO4 based diode pumped solid state lasers are rapidly occupying the markets traditionally dominated by water-cooled ion lasers and lamp-pumped lasers, especially when compact design and single-longitudinal-mode outputs are required.

Germanium (Ge) is the preferred lens and window material for high performance infrared imaging systems in the 8–12 um wavelength band.

Polarization Beamsplitter Cubes are constructed by cemented two right angle prisms, the hypotenuse of one prism is coated with polarization dielectric coating. When used with normal incident, un-polarized light, the incident beam is separated into two polarized beams, p-polarized component is passed straight through, s-polarized component is reflected out at 90deg.

α-BBO (α-BaB2O4) is a negative uniaxial crystal which has large birefringence over a broad transparent range of 190nm to 3500nm. α-BBO is an excellent crystal especially in UV and high power applications. The physical, chemical, thermal, and optical properties of alpha-BBO crystal are similar to those of Beta-BBO. However, there is no second order nonlinear effect in alpha-BBO crystal due to the centrosymmetry in its crystal structure and thus it has no use for second order nonlinear optical processes. Instead, alpha-BBO is widely used for fabrication of polarizers, polarizing beam displacers, phase retarders, birefringent plates, and time delay compensators especially those for UV and high power lasers.

Ytterbium-doped Potassium Gadolinium Tungstate (Yb:KGd(WO₄)₂, Yb:KGW) crystal is an excellent laser gain material, boasting numerous advantages over the widely used Nd³⁺-doped materials. Its wide spectral emission band of 1023-1060 nm enables the generation of short laser pulses (picosecond or femtosecond level). The broad absorption band at 980 nm and highly absorbent pump radiation allow it to efficiently utilize diode laser pumping. Compared with YAG doped with Yb³⁺ ions, KGW crystal has a larger absorption cross-section, which reduces the minimum pump intensity required to achieve transparency in the quasi-two-level system of Yb.

BK7 window is the most common type of window. It has good performance over visible and near infrared wavelength regions. At the same time, BK7 window is ideal for applications require minimal transmitted beam deviation. It is suitable for AR coating.

Plano-concave rectangular cylindrical lenses provide uni- axial negative imaging for anamorphic beam expansion and a wide range of applications.These lenses may also be used as mirror blanks if a concave cylindrical surface mirror is required.

Non-Polarizing Cube Beamsplitters also called NPBS Cube is a more sophisticated type consisting of two right- angle prisms cemented together at their hypotenuse faces.The cemented face of one prism is coated. Before cementing, with a metallic or dielectric layer having the desired reflecting properties, both in the percentage of reflection and the desired color. The absorption loss to the coating is minimal and transmission and reflection could be designed to 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, etc.