From the Laser Plume to the Laser Ceramics

The main stages of preparation of ceramic active elements of solid-state lasers are considered. The physical principles of laser synthesis of nanopowders are described. The features and processes taking place during compaction and compacts sintering are specified. Also we report on the investigation of characteristics of highly transparent ceramics on the basis of nanopowders synthesized in laser plume. It is shown that this approach enables to increase the “orange peel” formation threshold in the ceramics with strongly disordered crystalline structure. It opens the road to relatively simple synthesis technology from oxide materials and application of this ceramics as the gain media with oscillation efficiency higher than 50% and also leads to simplification of the synthesis technology of magnetoactive ceramics and to production of highly transparent YAG samples without the use of sintering heterovalent additives.