Crystal growth, spectroscopy, and tunable mid-infrared lasing of divalent chromium-doped Cd/sub 0.55/Mn/sub 0.45/Te

Widely tunable mid-infrared (MIR) lasing has been demonstrated from the novel medium namely chromium-doped cadmium manganese telluride (Cr:CdMnTe) in a spectral region from 2.17-3.01 μm. Laser applications of this wavelength region are remote sensing of green-house gases or air pollutants, biomedical uses, pump sources of optical parametric oscillations (OPO) for producing far infrared lasers, etc. A compact, efficient, and widely tunable MIR laser based on a transition metal-doped solid is an alternative to nonlinear mixing techniques such as OPOs. Recently, MIR lasers have been developed from divalent chromium doped binary or ternary compound II-VI semiconductors. The choice of host materials (ZnSe or ZnS, CdSe, and CdMnTe) for divalent chromium depends on melting points, crystal growth techniques, and spectroscopic behavior of chromium ions. Depending on the host material chromium ions show different spectroscopic features such as luminescence lifetime, quantum efficiency, and emission profile. The laser output energy of chromium-doped binary-compound hosts still remains tens of micro joules in a pulsed mode. The melting points of these hosts are relatively high compared to CdMnTe. In addition, Cd
_1-x
Mn
_x
Te is a ternary-compound semiconductor which provides different ligand field environments for Cr ions depending on its chemical composition (0 < x < 0.77). This compositional tuning can result in new physical effects. This paper reports crystal growth, spectroscopy, and widely tunable MIR lasing of Cr/sup 2+/:Cd/sub 0.55/Mn/sub 0.45/Te.