Manufacturing process of high-power laser crystals

The paper presents the advanced manufacturing process of crystals which are extensively used in high-power laser devices. Based on the properties of the typical LBO and YCOB crystals, a procedure including cutting, grinding, pre-polishing, MRF polishing, composite lap polishing and CMP polishing was proposed. Experiments were undertaken for various crystals and correlative manufacturing technologies were studied. Different polishing approaches were used, in which the MRF process was employed for LBO crystal and the composite lap polishing process was utilized for YCOB crystal. The results show that, by combining the manufacturing technologies, the surface figure and roughness of LBO reached 0.12λ and 0.77 nm, and the surface figure and roughness of YCOB reached 0.11λ and 0.68 nm respectively. (authors)