Optical properties and Faraday magneto-optical effects of highly transparent novel Tb2Zr2O7 fluorite ceramics

A novel magneto-optical transparent Tb2Zr2O7 ceramic with a high in-line transmittance of ∼76.2% at 635 nm (∼98.2% of the theoretical transmittance of perfect Tb2Zr2O7 single crystal) was successfully fabricated by vacuum sintering from its solid-phase reactive fluorite particle. In the visible region, the Tb2Zr2O7 bulk material was found to have a high refractive index of around 2.10 ± 0.03 and an optical basicity of 0.985 ± 0.015 while the electronic polarizability of the O2− anion in the Tb2Zr2O7 system generally remained constant at 2.45 ± 0.06 Å3. The Faraday effect results revealed that the transparent Tb2Zr2O7 ceramic had Verdet constants of −400 ± 4, −260 ± 4, and −62 ± 2 rad·T−1·m−1 at 515, 635, and 1064 nm, respectively, which were roughly 1.9-fold higher than the commercial Tb3Ga5O12 single crystal. Our outcomes demonstrated that the developed optical functional Tb2Zr2O7 ceramic has potential application as an excellent magneto-optical material.