Investigation of thermal diffusivity dependence on temperature in a group of optical single crystals doped with rare earth ions

Abstract The group of YAG, YVO4 and GdCOB single crystals was examined to determine the thermal diffusivity as a function of temperature in range from 30 °C to 300 °C. Further investigations concerned on analysis of the influence of dopants on these dependencies. The experimental setup based on thermal wave method with mirage detection was used. The samples represented different crystallographic systems such as cubic (YAG) tetragonal (YVO4) and monoclinic (GdCOB). The anisotropy of thermal conductivity of investigated samples was taken into account in the investigations. The crystals were doped with calcium ions, rare earth ions such as ytterbium, neodymium, and thulium, and also with transition metal vanadium. The results confirmed that influence of doping on the thermal diffusivity of investigated materials strongly depends on temperature. In general the thermal diffusivity decreases with increasing of sample temperature from 30 °C to 300 °C, however the drop in thermal diffusivity is the highest for pure single crystals. Doping is another factor reducing the heat transport in single crystals. Introduction of dopant ions into a crystal lattice leads to a significant decrease in the thermal diffusivity at lower temperatures in comparison with pure crystals. However, the influence of dopants becomes less pronounced with increasing temperature, and in case of weakly doped crystals it becomes negligible at higher temperatures. The interpretation of thermal diffusivity dependence on temperature for single crystals was based on the Debye model of lattice thermal conductivity of solids. The results allowed to conclude that the decrease of thermal diffusivity with temperature and increasing concentration of impurities is caused by shortening of the phonons mean free path due to phonon–phonon and phonon-point defect scatterings.