Strong magneto-optical effect of incongruent-melting Ce,Sc,Ca:GIG crystal with heavy Ce3+ doping
Haipeng Liu, Chunhua Zhu, Yanduan Yang, Xin Chen, Xiaolin Hu, Naifeng Zhuang, Jianzhong Chen
Abstract
To achieve high concentration of Ce3+ ions in Gd3Fe5O12 (GIG) crystal, the structure of co-doped Sc3+ and Ce3+ ions was designed and the doping energy was evaluated by the first-principles density functional theory. Based on this, Ce,Sc,Ca:GIG crystals with centimeter size and good quality were successfully grown by an improved edge-defined film-fed growth method. The transmission, magnetism, and magneto-optical effects were investigated in detailed. The Ce-doped concentration as high as 18 at% results in the (Ce0.54Gd2.41Ca0.05) (Sc0.45Fe4.55)O12 crystal having excellent magneto-optical properties. Its Faraday rotation angle increased to about −1534 deg. cm−1 at λ = 1550 nm. Therefore, the excellent magneto-optical performances reveal that Ce,Sc,Ca:Gd3Fe5O12 crystal has great potential to be utilized for miniaturized and high performance optical isolators in 1550 nm.