Abstract

Recently, ceramic lasers have been attractive since 1995 [1,2] because ceramics can be produced in large volumes, made into composite media with complicated structures, and heavily and homogeneously doped with laser-active ions. The ceramic lasers with high power density and high resistance to laser damage are very useful for energy conversion system from inexhaustible solar energy to other optical energy. Absorption spectra of Cr³⁺ ions in ionic crystals, for example, Y₃Al₅O₁₂ (YAG) cover the visible range (400-700 nm). YAG ceramics codoped with Nd³⁺ and Cr³⁺ ions are renewed as a laser medium with excitation of solar energy because of highly efficient energy transfer from Cr³⁺ to Nd³⁺ ions [3,4].

© 2009 IEEE