Preparation and Characterization of Lithium Niobate Single Crystals Doped with Zinc and Erbium.

This paper reports a process for the growth of zinc–erbium codoped lithium niobate single crystals using a growth charge synthesized from a Nb2O5:Zn:Er precursor and Li2CO3. Characterization of the LiNbO3:Zn:Er crystals by high-speed evaluation of the number of scattering centers, piezoacoustic measurements, photoinduced light scattering, and laser conoscopy has demonstrated that they have high optical quality. The proposed technological approaches are aimed at designing functional materials with fundamentally new characteristics for electronics, acoustoelectronics, and integrated, quantum, and laser optics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]