Growth peculiarities and non-linear properties of profiled doped strontium-barium niobate crystals

The nominally pure and doped with Ce, Cr, Co strontium-barium niobate crystals of SBN:61 were grown by modified Stepanov technique. The specific features of the technique were studied and growth conditions for obtaining the high homogeneous SBN crystals in bulk-profiled configuration were optimized. The photorefractive and non-linear properties of SBN pure and doped with Ce, Cr and Co were investigated. It was shown that SBN:Ce crystal is an excellent medium for high efficiency holographic information recording. SBN:Cr and SBN:Co crystals are promising photorefractive materials with short response time. The as-grown SBN crystals were also used to demonstrate the diffuse noncollinear second harmonic generation emitted by a random domain SBN structure and Stimulated Raman Scattering and two-photon absorption associated with cubic nonlinear susceptibility of the materials.