Fabrication of doped transparent polycrystalline ceramic materials
AssigneeCorning Incorporated
InventorsDavid August Sniezek Loeber, Haitao Zhang
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Abstract
Solution synthesis of rare-earth-doped nanoparticles, followed by flash sintering of the nanoparticles, can produce rare-earth-doped transparent polycrystalline ceramics with beneficial optical and/or mechanical properties, such as low optical losses, high optical coherence, high refractive-index controllability, and/or high mechanical strength. In one example application, high-quality erbium-doped yttria for quantum memory devices can be fabricated.
Claims29
A method of forming a rare-earth-doped transparent polycrystalline ceramic material, the method comprising:
- synthesizing rare-earth-doped nanoparticles having an average diameter of less than 200 nm;
- creating the rare-earth-doped transparent polycrystalline ceramic material by flash sintering a sample of the rare-earth-doped nanoparticles for a duration not exceeding ten minutes, using an electrical current through the sample that is created by heating the sample in the presence of an electrical field.
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A transparent rare-earth-doped polycrystalline ceramic material comprising:
- a polycrystalline metal-compound matrix having a grain size of less than 1 μm;
- and
- a rare-earth dopant distributed throughout the polycrystalline metal-compound matrix, wherein at least 80% of the rare-earth dopant are located inside grains of the polycrystalline metal-compound matrix away from grain boundaries.
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The transparent rare-earth-doped polycrystalline ceramic material, wherein a concentration of the rare-earth dopant is higher than the solubility of the rare-earth dopant in the metal-compound matrix.
A method of making a layered ceramic waveguide structure, the method comprising:
- synthesizing first metal-compound nanoparticles having an average diameter of less than 200 nm;
- synthesizing second, rare-earth-doped metal compound nanoparticles having an average diameter of less than 200 nm;
- tape-casting an undercladding layer of the first metal compound nanoparticles;
- tape-casting, on top of the undercladding layer, a waveguide core layer of the second, rare-earth-doped metal compound nanoparticles;
- tape-casting, on top of the waveguide core layer, a cladding layer of the first metal compound nanoparticles;
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- flash sintering the undercladding layer, waveguide core layer, and cladding layer to create a polycrystalline metal compound matrix having a grain size of less than 500 nm, wherein the waveguide core layer comprises rare-earth dopant distributed throughout the polycrystalline metal compound matrix.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.