Transparent Ceramic Composites: Materials Design and Structuring for Lasers, Scintillators and IR Windows

Transparent ceramic composite” may sound like an oxymoron: to achieve transparency, the scattering of light must be limited to minimum, and the presence of another phase generally causes scattering. Yet, they exist and represent wonderful examples of the flexibility of ceramic technology and close-to-perfect materials. In this presentation, we explore the diverse landscape of transparent ceramic composites. Unlike common ceramic composites, the dimension of the second phase must be either very small (nanometric-to-submicron, leading to very good mechanical properties) or significantly higher in comparison to the wavelength of light (functional ceramics for photonics, e.g. laser gain media or scintillators) to avoid scattering. The presentation will present transparency modelling of ceramic nanocomposites and selected use cases will be showcased to illustrate the versatility and potential of transparent ceramic composites.The support of the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research under the project PRIN 2022 – LUMINANCE, 2022E42PMA is acknowledged