Mg3B7O13Cl: A New Quasi-Phase Matching Crystal in the Deep-Ultraviolet Region

Deep-ultraviolet lasers play an important role in many scientific and technical fields, the generation of which by means of the nonlinear optical frequency conversion technology attracted immense research interest over the past few decades. Up to now, there are few nonlinear optical crystals, except KBe2BO3F2, which could produce deep-ultraviolet coherent light by a harmonic generation process. However, industrialization of KBe2BO3F2 is hampered by its layering growth habit and weak interlayer force. Here, a new deep-ultraviolet nonlinear optical crystal, Mg3B7O13Cl, is found, which will be a good candidate for deep-ultraviolet coherent generation. It crystallizes an acentric space group of Pca2(1) at room temperature with both 3D borate frameworks and distorted octahedrons, which makes it a unity of optical nonlinearity and ferroelectricity. Furthermore, a short absorption cutoff of 155 nm, a second harmonic generation coefficient of 0.38 pm V-1, a coercive field of 21.2 kV cm(-1), and a remanent polarization of 0.36 mu C cm(-2) for Mg3B7O13Cl crystal are identified. These features indicate that Mg3B7O13Cl crystal can generate deep-ultraviolet coherent light by a quasi-phase matching technique with a periodically poling method. This pioneering and profound work points out a new research area in the development of deep-ultraviolet lasers.