Laser glass is a glass-based solid-state laser material. It is widely used in various types of solid-state laser optics and has become the main laser material for high-power and high-energy lasers.
The laser glass consists of two parts: the matrix glass and the activation ion: the physical and chemical properties of the laser glass are mainly determined by the matrix glass, while its spectral properties are mainly determined by the activation ion, but the matrix glass and activation ion interact with each other, so the activation ion has a certain influence on the physical and chemical properties of the laser glass, while the influence of the matrix glass on its spectral properties is sometimes quite important. As a laser glass matrix glass, most of the current use of optical glass, however, not any kind of optical glass access to any kind of activation ions are suitable for laser glass.
The main reason for the rapid development of laser glass is the following advantages: the formation of a large range of matrix glass, adding different types and quantities of activation ions, to obtain laser glass with different characteristics; easy to prepare into the required performance, size and shape of the laser glass; glass proximity order and remote disorder structural characteristics, so that it can be obtained through the optical glass process, high transparency, isotropic, optically homogeneous The use of thermoforming and cold processing process, can be made into different shapes of laser glass: can be pulled into fibers as small as a few microns in diameter, and can be made into a few centimeters in diameter and several meters long rods and tens of centimeters thick glass plate; lower cost, lower purity requirements of raw materials, preparation process is relatively easy to achieve, the manufacturing cycle is shorter.
