Growth and Property of Ce³⁺-doped La₂CaB₁₀O₁₉ Crystal

Besides its application as nonlinear optical devices, La 2 CaB 10 O 19 (LCB) crystal has been extensively studied as a host crystal due to excellent properties.Nevertheless, rare-earth (RE) ions doped LCB crystals for ultraviolet (UV) lasers have not been studied yet.In this work, Ce 3+ doped La 2 CaB 10 O 19 (Ce 3+ :LCB) crystal with the size of 40 mm×21 mm×6 mm was grown by top-seeded solution growth (TSSG) method.Its lattice parameters are slightly different from that of the LCB crystal, and its X-ray rocking curve indicates that the Ce 3+ :LCB is of high crystalline quality.Transmittance spectrum and UV absorption spectrum measured at room temperature show intense absorption in the ranges of 200-288 nm and 305-330 nm,and Sellmeier equations for the refractive indices were determined by least-squares method.The excitation and fluorescence spectra show that there are two broad excitation peaks at 280 nm and 316 nm, corresponding to transitions of Ce 3+ ions from 4f to 5d.Four emission peaks were obtained at 290, 304, 331, and 355 nm, which correspond to transitions from 5d state to 2 F 5/2 state and 2 F 7/2 state.Ce 3+ :LCB crystal exhibits high thermal conductivity (6.45 W/(m•K)) at 300 K, and keeps good thermal stability with the increase of temperatures.Its thermal expansion coefficients and lattice parameters of c direction linearly enlarge from 2.94×10 -6 /K and 0.91240 nm to 5.3×10 -5 /K and 0.91246 nm in the temperature range from 358 K to 773 K, respectively.These results demonstrate that Ce 3+ :LCB crystal has excellent optical properties and good thermal stability, which is conducive to its application for UV lasers.