Needly Titanium Sapphire Cut Stones

These are interesting titanium laser sapphires cut from the dark, bubbly rinds of a boule.  This material is really cool--it has a deeper color and is filled with inclusions.  Several of them have parallel needle-shaped bubbles along with general bubbles and dark spots.  We had them cut in miscellaneous shapes and sizes and they can be purchased individually.

Titanium-doped sapphire is one of the most powerful and widely-used materials in solid state lasers.  It can be used to make lasers with tunable output wavelengths and especially powerful, femtosecond pulses.

This material sometimes appears at the edge of crystals where the concentration of titanium gets too high for the crystal to grow happily.  This results both in the inclusions and the extra deep color of these stones.