Growth and spectroscopic characterization of Pr:Gd2SrAl2O7 crystal-A potential solid red laser material

In this article, a series of (PrxGd1-x)2SrAl2O7 (x = 0.006-0.05) polycrystalline compounds were synthesized by traditional solid-state reaction to find out the optimum Pr ion's concentration of the best fluorescence perfor-mance for single crystal growth. Then, a transparent 0.95 at.% Pr:Gd2SrAl2O7 (Pr:GSAO) single crystal was successfully grown by the Czochralski method. Spectroscopic properties and Judd-Ofelt theory analysis of this crystal were investigated in detail. The Pr:GSAO crystal has a strong and broad absorption band at about 453 nm, with the absorption cross section of 4.53 x 10-20 cm2 and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 5.10 nm (n-polarization), which matches well with the emission bands of InGaN laser diodes. There are a large number of emission peaks in the visible region, the strongest emission peak is located at about 662 nm with the cross section of 1.20 x 10-18 cm2 (n). The fluorescence lifetime of the 3P0 energy level of Pr:GSAO crystal is 5.55 & mu;s. These results reveal that the Pr:GSAO crystal is a potential candidate for red lasers.