Neodymium zirconate (Nd2Zr2O7) transparent ceramics as a solid state laser material

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Transparent neodymium zirconate (Nd2Zr2O7) ceramics have been fabricated from nanoparticles prepared by combustion synthesis. Emission at 1054.5 nm has been demonstrated using a laser diode pump at 800 nm. A transmittance of 60% at wavelengths longer than ∼900 nm was achieved. A consequence of the very high concentration of Nd ions (1.32×1028 ions/m3) is that the absorption bands are wider than those of Nd doped Y3Al5O12 (Nd:YAG) facilitating pumping over a broader range of wavelengths. The full width at half maximum of the emission peak is also larger than that of Nd:YAG, and the decay time is 460 μs making Nd2Zr2O7 an excellent candidate for efficient high-power microchip lasers emitting at 1054 nm with diode pumping at ∼800 or ∼900 nm.