Photorefractive properties of paraelectric potassium lithium tantalate niobate crystal doped with iron

We report the successful growth of paraelectric potassium lithium tantalate niobate (KLTN) single crystal doped with iron. Detailed investigations have been made on the photorefractive properties of the as-grown crystal. The key parameters such as space-charge field, grating response time, photorefractive sensitivity and sign of the dominant charge carrier were obtained by two-wave mixing technique. 1.7 mm thick sample exhibits a high diffraction efficiency of 78% at the external field of 3.3 kV/cm and a sensitivity of 1.49 × 10^-10E₀ cm²/J. The two-wave mixing gain coefficient increases linearly with external field, and reaches a large value of 19.4 cm^-1 at 4 kV/cm. Based on experimental results, iron is an effective dopant to KLTN which shows high diffraction efficiency and two-wave mixing gain coefficient.