| The primary focus of this work is on examining structure-property relationships of interest for high-power nonlinear optical and laser crystals. An intuitive and simply illustrated method for assessing the nonlinear optical potential of structurally characterized noncentrosymmetric materials is introduced. This method is applied to materials including common quartz and tourmaline and then extended to synthetic materials including borates, silicates, aluminates, and phosphates. Particularly, the contributions of symmetric tetrahedral and triangular anionic groups are inspected. It is shown that both types of groups significantly contribute to the optical frequency converting abilities of noncentrosymmetric crystals. In this study, several known materials are included as well as several new materials. The roles of the orientation, composition, and packing density of these anionic groups are also discussed.; The structures and optical properties of the known materials BPO 4, NaAlO2, LaCa4O(BO3)3, and tourmaline; the new compounds La0.8Y0.2Sc3 (BO3)4 and Ba2B10O 17; and the laser host Sr3Y0.75Yb0.25(BO 3)3 are described. |
