BBO (Beta-Barium borate or β-BaB2O4 ) is most versatile non-linear optical crystals thanks to its unique features, e.g. broad transmission, and phase matching ranges, large non-linear coefficient, high damage threshold, and excellent optical homogeneity.
BBO crystal has large effective second harmonic generation (SHG) coefficient about 6 times greater than that of KDP crystal, as well as excellent electro-optic crystal applied in the application of high power laser system.
BBO crystals an efficient NLO crystal widely used in Tunable lasers: Dye lasers, Ultrafast Pulse lasers, Ti:Sapphire and Alexandrite lasers, Argon Ion and Copper-Vapor lasers. BBO’s OPO and OPA are powerful tools for generating a widely tunable coherent radiation from the UV to IR.
There is another form of BBO with the different crystal structure, which is called alpha-BBO, known as a-BBO. Alpha-BBO is a good UV birefringent crystal and is widely used these days in UV polarizing prism. BBO crystals are also widely used as the electro-optical material in various Pockels cells and modulators.
This article comes from honoroptics edit released