Alpha-Barium Borate Crystal

High temperature phase of α-BBO Crystal (BaB₂O₄) is one of the excellent birefringent crystals. It is characterized by large birefringent coefficient and wide transmission window ranged from 189nm to 3500nm. Due to its high chemical stability and medium hardness, α-BBO is fabricated easily into many kinds of optical components.

The physical, chemical, thermal and optical properties of α-BBO are similar to those of β-BBO. However, α-BBO has no nonlinear optical property due to its centric symmetry structure while β-BBO is recommended in the NLO systems for its acentric symmetry structure.

Alpha-BBO is popularly used to make polarizers, polarizing beam displacers, phase retarders, birefringent plates, and time delay compensators especially those for UV and high power lasers.