An electro-optic continuous laser beam steering device based on an SBN75 crystal

Abstract

The performance of electro-optics (EO) beam steering systems relies on the EO effect exhibited by certain crystals which is a refractive index change with an applied electric field. The very high EO coefficient and transparency, high optical damage limit, low conductivity, and comparatively low Curie temperature of SrxBa1-xNb2O6 (SBN) make this EO crystal very attractive for EO beam steering applications. In this study, an EO laser beam steering device based on a bulk Sr0.75Ba0.25Nb2O6 (SBN75) crystal grown at Teledyne Scientific was designed 1 . The SBN beam steerer was tested under different scenarios and the first and second EO effects and all linear EO coefficients of the SBN75 ( ) were measured based on the laser beam’s deflection angles and compared with the values reported in the literature. The results showed that Teledyne’s SBN75 crystal exhibited a primary EO effect of about 4 to 6% more than the value reported in the literature at the room temperature, the share of the secondary EO effect is less than 8% and the linear EO effect disappeared at 58 °C.