Stable garnets in the Er2O3–Sc2O3–Al2O3 oxide system for optical ceramics application

Abstract

Erbium-scandium-aluminum garnets (ErSAG) with the maximum possible concentrations of scandium cations in the dodecahedral and octahedral positions of the crystal lattice have been synthesized. It has been established that in ErSAG at a temperature of 1600 °C the maximum possible concentration of scandium in the dodecahedral and octahedral position reaches 64.7 ± 2.0 at. % and 92.0 ± 2.0 at. %, respectively. The maximum possible concentrations of scandium cations in the dodecahedral position and the set of range of possible ErSAG compositions decrease at increasing of calcination temperature. It was shown that ceramics technique allow to produce the optical ceramics with compositions {Er1.5Sc1.5}[Sc0.2Al1.8](Al3)O12 (SAG: Er 50 at%) and {Y1.57Er0.03Sc1.4}[Sc0.2Al1.8](Al3)O12 (YSAG: Er 1 at%), which can be considered as analogs of yttrium-aluminum garnet single crystals (YAG: Er 50 at% and YAG: Er 1 at%).