Lasers & Sources

Shasta Crystals wins DOD directed-energy weapons award

Oct. 30, 2015

In DEW news, Shasta Crystals announced that it has received a DOD SBIR award for crystalline fibers for DEW applications.

Gail Overton

In directed-energy weapons (DEW) news, Shasta Crystals (San Francisco, CA) announced that it has received a U.S. Army Department of Defense (DOD) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award entitled: "True Double-Clad Fully Crystalline Fibers for DEW Applications." This Phase I grant awards Shasta Crystals $150,000 to perform research into the feasibility of growing and cladding doped yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) optical fibers of sufficient quality to improve the performance of high-power fiber lasers.

Shasta's CEO Gisele Maxwell says, "We greatly appreciate the support of the United States Army and the Department of Defense in this area of materials science. Single crystal fibers can act as an intermediate between laser crystals and doped glass fibers, to guide laser light with the efficiencies found in bulk crystals. Our goal is to make a cladded flexible fiber with a core of dopant that will exhibit superior wave-guiding properties."

Shasta Crystals is a crystal growth company making advanced materials that are critical components in laser systems for a variety of markets including industrial, medical, scientific, military, and consumer electronics. Shasta specializes in the use of the Laser Heated Pedestal Growth (LHPG) technology that allows rapid growth of crystal fibers with a variety of dopants.

SOURCE: Shasta Crystals; http://shastacrystals.com/PR_10_26_15

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.