The characteristics of high-quality Yb:YAG single crystal fibers grown by a LHPG method and the effects of their discoloration

Tao Wang; Jian Zhang; Na Zhang; Siyuan Wang; Baiyi Wu; Zhitai Jia; Xutang Tao

doi:10.1039/c9ra03633d

The characteristics of high-quality Yb:YAG single crystal fibers grown by a LHPG method and the effects of their discoloration

RSC Adv. 2019 Jul 22;9(39):22567-22575. doi: 10.1039/c9ra03633d. eCollection 2019 Jul 17.

Authors

Tao Wang¹, Jian Zhang^{1

2}, Na Zhang¹, Siyuan Wang¹, Baiyi Wu¹, Zhitai Jia^{1

2}, Xutang Tao^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University Jinan 250100 China z.jia@sdu.edu.cn txt@sdu.edu.cn.
² Key Laboratory of Functional Crystal Materials and Device, Ministry of Education Jinan 250100 China.

Abstract

Single crystal fibers (SCFs), especially ytterbium (Yb) doped crystal fibers, have great potential in the field of high-power lasers. Colorless Yb:YAG single crystal fibers were fabricated using a laser heated pedestal growth (LHPG) method with a diameter fluctuation of less than 2% and a length to diameter ratio greater than 320 : 1. An abnormal color issue exists with respect to Yb:YAG crystals. The origin of coloration was studied via density functional theory, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, XPS and Raman spectroscopy and it was confirmed that the cyan coloration of Yb:YAG crystals is due to oxygen vacancies. Yb:YAG SCFs prepared via the LHPG method could avoid this type of defect due to the large specific surface area and melt convection caused by surface tension. The fundamental properties of the cyan Yb:YAG crystal source rod and colorless Yb:YAG SCFs were systematically investigated. The colorless Yb:YAG SCFs have higher infrared transmittance and thermal conductivity. The distributions of Yb³⁺ along the radial and axial directions were also measured. Meanwhile we demonstrated the propagation loss and a fiber laser using the colorless Yb:YAG SCFs, obtaining a minimum loss coefficient of 0.008 dB cm^-1 and a maximum continuous-wave (CW) output power of 3.62 W. The colorless Yb:YAG SCFs with good thermal conductivity, low propagation loss, wide transparency and uniform ion distribution show promise for acting as the host material in single-mode lasers.