The ternary compound Cadmium Manganese Telluride (“CMT”) is a magneto-optical material that is ICL’s newest crystal product. This magneto-optical material has a giant Verdetconstant.
Potential applications for this material (as well as CdMnHgTe which is under development ) include Faraday rotation devices (optical isolators in the range 630nm to 1100nm ), LEDs, spintronicss, electro-magnetic interference free devices, field tunable phase shifters, small coupled solar cells for fly-by-light applications, phased array radar with completely fiber-fed antennae, bomb detonators and harsh environment sensors.
Minature Faraday rotation devices are a promising growth field, where precision wavelength filtering and optical rotation boost application performance in many specialty fields. Nedical, Military and Communications are just a few examples. Wavelength-specific crystal performance is optimized by specific formulations of the Cd and Mn balance, then refined by the specific pathlength of the crystal. A minitature platform not compatible with more common Faraday crytals is therefore made possible.
At the optimal composition, absorption does not increase with pathlength (thickness) although transmission will vary. Absorption is composition dependent. The spectral data shown is for a 2mm thick sample. ICL’s standard processing for CdMnTe is flatness of 1 l, parallelism of 30 arc seconds, optical surface quality 60-40, reflection loss with broadband AR coating < 0.05% @ 880-1100nm, Max. Ø 19mm.