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Polycrystalline ceramic laser materials are gaining importance in the development of novel diode-pumped solid-state
lasers. Compared to single-crystals, ceramic laser materials offer advantages in terms of ease of fabrication, shape, size,
and control of dopant concentrations. Recently, we have developed Neodymium doped Yttria (Nd:Y2O3) as a solid-state
ceramic laser material. A scalable production method was utilized to make spherical non agglomerated and
monodisperse metastable ceramic powders of compositions that were used to fabricate polycrystalline ceramic material
components. This processing technique allowed for higher doping concentrations without the segregation problems that
are normally encountered in single crystalline growth. We have successfully fabricated undoped and Neodymium doped
Yttria material up to 2" in diameter, Ytterbium doped Yttria, and erbium doped Yttria. We are also in the process of
developing other sesquioxides such as scandium Oxide (Sc2O3) and Lutesium Oxide (Lu2O3) doped with Ytterbium,
erbium and thulium dopants. In this paper, we present our initial results on the material, optical, and spectroscopic
properties of the doped and undoped sesquioxide materials. Polycrystalline ceramic lasers have enormous potential
applications including remote sensing, chem.-bio detection, and space exploration research. It is also potentially much
less expensive to produce ceramic laser materials compared to their single crystalline counterparts because of the shorter
fabrication time and the potential for mass production in large sizes.
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