I was looking up neodymium on dictionary.com and it said that neodymium is sometimes used in doping glass lasers. What the heck does that mean?
Incidentally, I was looking up the spelling so I could Google “homemade neodymium electromagnets”, so if anyone knows of a good link, please hook a brutha up. Thanks.
"A dopant, also called doping agent and dope, is an impurity element added to a semiconductor lattice in quite low concentrations in order to alter the optical/electrical properties of the semiconductor.
The process of introducing dopants into a semiconductor is called doping.
The addition of a dopant to a semiconductor has the effect of shifting the Fermi level within the material. This results in a material with predominantly negative (n type) or positive (p type) charge carriers depending on the dopant species. Pure semiconductors altered by the presence of dopants are known as extrinsic semiconductors (cf. intrinsic semiconductor). Dopants are introduced into semiconductors in a variety of ways including ion implantation and surface diffusion."
From Wikipedia.
to get a laser you need something that emits light. Glass by itself does not (well not to any useful degree). neodymium emits very narrow bandwidth light when higher energy light is shone on it, perfect for lasers. So you put a little in glass which is called doping.
alittle bit more is here http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/optmod/lassol.html