Neodymium Doped Yttrium Orthovanadate (Nd:yvo4)

Neodymium Doped Yttrium Orthovanadate (Nd:YVO4) is the most efficient laser host crystal for diode pumping among the current commercial laser crystals, especially, for low to middle power density. This is mainly for Nd:YVO4's absorption and emission features surpassing Nd:YAG. Pumped by laser diodes, Nd:YVO4 crystal has been incorporated with high NLO coefficient crystals (LBO,BBO,or KTP) to frequency-shift the output from the near infrared to green, blue, or even UV. This incorporation to construct all solid state lasers is an ideal laser tool that can cover the most widespread applications of lasers, including machining, material processing, spectroscopy, wafer inspection, light displays, medical diagnostics, laser printing, and data storage, etc. It has been shown that Nd:YVO4 based diode pumped solid state lasers are rapidly occupying the markets traditionally dominated by water-cooled ion lasers and lamp-pumped lasers, especially when compact design and single-longitudinal-mode outputs are required.