Cleveland Crystals (Cleveland, OH) has developed a domestic source of material for tunable lasers and high-average-power Pockels cells. The material provides a variety of features and a wide transmission frequency range critical for supporting a variety of applications, including medicine, spectroscopy, LIDAR, and materials processing.

Material for solid-state lasers.
Cleveland Crystals, now part of major optics supplier Gooch & Housego, received funding from MDA’s predecessor agencies via two Phase I and one Phase II SBIR contracts.

Compared to dye lasers, solid-state lasers based on the material offer both cost advantages and wide tenability. The material could be used in Q-switched lasers, which are now well known for removing tattoos, ablating tissue in the prostate, processing the surface of industrial materials, and providing precision micromachining of optical, mechanical, and electrical components.

For more information on Cleveland Crystals technology, visit http://info.hotims.com/34461-506 . (Source: Gary Catella, Gooch and Housego, Inc./NTTC; MDA TechUpdate, Missile Defense Agency, National Technology Transfer Center Washington Operations).

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This article first appeared in the December, 2011 issue of Defense Tech Briefs Magazine.

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