Inorganic Chemistry Commons^™

Synthesis Of Complex Fluorides For Optical Applications, Seth Stepleton

All Dissertations

Large single crystals of alkali metal fluorides are desirable for many reasons. Fluoride laser crystals have a wide transmission range and on account of their low phonon energies, many efficient laser emissions have been obtained from 285 nm to 4.34 µm.1,2 Inorganic fluoride single crystals feature large bandgaps, very wide optical transmittance ranges from vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) to mid-IR wavelength regions, lower refractive indices than those of oxides, and typically lower phonon energies (which drastically reduce multiphonon relaxation rates of rare earth ions).3
The main goal of this work was to investigate the hydrothermal synthesis of alkali metal fluorides. Melt techniques …