Study on measurement of linear electro-optic coefficient of a minute irregular octahedron cBN wafer

The cubic boron nitride (cBN) is a kind of artificial electro-optic (EO) crystal, and we have not found any relative reports so far. Because the artificial synthetic cBN wafers are very small and hard, the wafers cannot be cut into rectangular slabs. The polarizer-sample-λ/4 retardation plate (compensator)-analyzer (PSCA) transverse EO modulator has to be adjusted to the minute irregular octahedron of cBN wafers. When the applied voltage is along [1 1 1] direction of the wafer, due to refraction, the angle between the incident beam direction and the (1 1 1) plane (top or bottom plane) of the wafer should be 25.4°, and the angle between the polarization direction of the polarizer and the plane of incidence should be 50.8° by calculation, respectively. The half-wave voltage of the cBN sample was obtained for the first time, by means of detection of the output optic signals from the modulator with and without an applied electric field on the sample, respectively. Furthermore, the linear EO coefficient was obtained, γ=1.05×10-14m/V. The analysis of the experimental resulting error was carried out.