Polycrystalline magneto-optical transparent Pr2Zr2O7 pyrochlore ceramic for Faraday rotation

To design an innovative magneto-optical material aimed at a large Verdet constant coincides with the development trend of state-of-the-art modern optical devices. In this work, a magneto-optical transparent Pr2Zr2O7 ceramic with pyrochlore structure was successfully fabricated by vacuum sintering plus hydrogen reduction for the first time to our knowledge. The two- and three-dimensional images observed on the laser scanning confocal microscopy reveal that the grain-boundary dent depth of the polished Pr2Zr2O7 ceramic is only similar to 1.6 mu m upon thermal etching at a high temperature of 1675 degrees C for 2 h, showing excellent heat-resistance ability. The crystal-clear Pr2Zr2O7 ceramic has a high in-line transmittance of similar to 71.6% at 780 nm (similar to 92.3% of the theoretical value), a high refractive index of similar to 2.1, and an effective magnetic moment of similar to 5.28 mu (B). In the visible region, the O2- polarizability and optical basicity of the Pr2Zr2O7 compound generally retain constants around 2.37 +/- 0.07 & Aring;(3) and 0.965 +/- 0.015, respectively. The magneto-optical transparent Pr2Zr2O7 ceramic exhibits high Verdet constants of -336 +/- 4, -208 +/- 3, -108 +/- 1, and -48 +/- 2 rad<middle dot>T-1<middle dot>m(-1) at 515, 635, 780, and 1064 nm, respectively, which were similar to 1.55-fold higher than the commercial Tb3Ga5O12 single crystal. Our developed new-type ceramic material has excellent potential application for Faraday rotation.