Chalcogenide glass ceramics: A high-performing innovative infrared acousto-optic material

The acousto-optic (AO) characteristics of the 80GeSe(2)-20Ga(2)Se(3) chalcogenide glass and glass-ceramic (GC) samples at 10.6 mu m is compared for the first time in this study. The thermomechanical performance and AO figure of merit M-2 (189 x 10(18) s(3)/g) of the GC sample are improved greatly compared with the corresponding base glass. The maximum M-2 value of the GC sample is similar to 126 times greater than that of fused silica and similar to 1.6 times greater than that of single-crystal germanium. A significant reduction in acoustic attenuation (5 dB/cm) is also observed. The micro-structural results indicated that, the precipitated Ga2Se3 crystal grains and the tetrahedral structure in the residual matrix glass jointly reduced the acoustic attenuation of the glass ceramics with a heat treatment time of 15 h and improved the thermomechanical performance. This work suggests that chalcogenide glass-ceramic can be a new type of promising infrared AO material.