What is a BBO Crystal?

BBO crystal is a kind of crystal with obvious comprehensive advantages and good performance among nonlinear optical crystals. It has a very wide light transmission range, a very low absorption coefficient, and a weak piezoelectric ringing effect. Compared with other electro-optical crystals Modulated crystal, with higher extinction ratio, larger phase matching angle, higher light damage resistance threshold, broadband temperature matching and excellent optical uniformity, which is beneficial to improve the stability of laser output power, especially for Nd :YAG laser frequency triple has a wide range of applications.

The main uses of BBO crystals:

(1) It is used for frequency doubling, frequency doubling, frequency doubling, frequency doubling and doubling frequency of 1064nm Nd:YAG laser.
(2) It is used for double frequency, triple frequency, sum frequency and difference frequency of dye laser and Ti:sapphire laser.
(3) For optical parametric oscillation, amplifiers, etc.

BBO switch:

The electro-optical Q-switch made of it is often used in high repetition rate, high-power electro-optical Q-switched lasers, all-solid-state picosecond, femtosecond regenerative amplifier systems.

Since the turn-off time (<4ns) of the electro-optical Q-switch is much shorter than that of the acousto-optic Q-switch, the all-solid-state short-cavity Q-switched laser using the BBO electro-optical Q-switch can generate a high-energy laser with a pulse width of less than 4ns. The preferred light source for electro-optical engraving machines. The BBO electro-optical Q-switch can be turned off and can withstand up to 150W of intracavity oscillating optical power (laser output power up to 50W) without water cooling.

The main properties of BBO crystal:

wdt_ID Attributes Values
1 Chemical formula β-BaB2O4
2 Crystal structure Trigonal system, 3m point group
3 Cell parameters a=b=12.532 A c=12.717 A z=6
4 Melting point 1095±5°C
5 Mohs hardness 4.5~5
6 Density 3.85g/cm3
7 Optical uniformity △n≈10-6/cm
8 Absorption coefficient α < 0.001/cm@1064nm α < 0.01/cm@532nm α < 0.5/cm@2550nm
9 Thermal conductivity ⊥C, k1=k2=1.2w/m/k, ‖C, k3=1.6w/m/k