A new ternary chalcogenide crystal for nonlinear optical applications in the mid-infrared: LiInSe/sub 2/

Summary form only given. Recently we demonstrated that LiInS/sub 2/ can be grown with sufficient size and quality for real applications and in 2001 both second harmonic generation (SHG) and optical parametric amplification have been realized. However, the nonlinear coefficients turned out to be much smaller than those of AgGaS/sub 2/. We studied now the analogous LiInSe/sub 2/ since the substitution of S by Se is expected to improve the nonlinearity as in the case of the chalcopyrites AgGaS/sub 2/ and AgGaSe/sub 2/. Here we describe the synthesis of single crystals of LiInSe/sub 2/, the results of its structural analysis and present measurements of its transmission, band edge, index of refraction and the nonlinear coefficients.