Growth of CsLiB6O10 crystals with high laser-damage tolerance

CsLiB6O10 crystals were grown from high-quality single-phase sintered powder by the solution-stirring top-seeded solution growth (SS-TSSG) technique. The sintered powder was obtained by the mixing-in-aqueous-solution technique. The grown crystals possessed an approximately 2.3-fold higher bulk laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) for ultraviolet laser than those grown by the conventional method and fused quartz. In addition, the higher-LIDT crystals exhibited slow dissolution in a dilute water solution. We report that a moderate growth rate is easily achievable by the SS-TSSG method due to the homogenization of the supersaturation distribution. We also discuss the importance of the growth from single-phase sintered powder obtained by the mixing-in-aqueous-solution technique.