High doping Nd:YAG transparent ceramics fabricated by solid-state reactive sintering

Nd:YAG transparent ceramics with different doping concentrations were fabricated by a solid‐state reaction method and vacuum sintering. Powder mixture of α‐Al2O3, Y2O3, and Nd2O3 doped with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and MgO were sintered between 1500 oC and 1750 oC to examine the densification behavior in Nd:YAG ceramics. For the high doping 5 at%Nd:YAG transparent ceramics, the sintering kinetics and microstructure evolution were mainly discussed. It is found that the optimal sintering temperature for 5.0 at%Nd:YAG ceramics was at ∼1700 oC, and the in‐line transmittance increased with the increase of holding time. The best specimen with the holding time of 30h achieved 82.2% in transmittance at 1064nm, whose average grain size was ∼15μm. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)