Aperture 7.2mm customized LiNbO3 and MgO:LiNbO3 Pockels Cells

Lithium Niobate crystals have become one of the most commonly used material for Q-switches and phase modulators for its high Electro-Optical coefficients attributed by their large electro-optic coefficients, non-hygroscopicity, good transmission up to 4.0 µm and operation in transverse mode. 

Hangzhou Shalom EO offers the pockels cells made from LiNbO3 crystals and MgO:LiNbO3 crystals, with aperture size of 2.5mm to 9mm. The LiNbO3 and MgO:LiNbO3 crystals with Cr-Au electrode for electro-optical modulators or pockels cells are also offered.

Side physical effcets of Pockels cells:

When it comes to practical applications of Pockels cells, one may need to take some additional side effects into account:

• Etalon effects may still exists and affect the optical performance if the beam direction is perpendicular to the faces of crystal, Even when the end faces of the crystal are coated with high-quality AR coatings.
• Temperature could significantly affect the obtain phase changes.For example, a Pockels cell which is set to generate perfect high-contrast amplitude modulation, may require readjustments of the operation voltages when the temperature changes. However there are thermally compensated double crystal designs may circumvent the problem.
• For operation with large beam radius, it is worth paying attention to sort out an optimized design for electrodes (possibly with additional auxiliary electrodes for high uniformity of the generated electric field, as otherwise one may obtain a spatially varying modulation).
• Nonlinear crystals often exhibit substantial piezo-electric and elastooptic effects, which can have substantial influences on the performance at high modulation frequencies.
• Operating at high power levels, thermal effects may be induced by residual absorption of the crystal . Therefore materials with lower absorption are preferable for high power applications
• The crystals used in Pockels cells are nonlinear crystal materials, they inherently demonstrates considerable optical nonlinearities. For instance, self-phase modulation and nonlinear self-focusing might occur for light pulses with substantial peak power.