What raw materials are used to make a laser?

Answer 1

It depends on the type of laser you have in mind. Building lasers is technically very demanding. For example, in a crystal laser like a ruby laser, you would need a perfect ruby crystal (hence man-made), ground to perfect flatness and parallelism on each end, with tolerances within about a quarter wavelength of the laser's output. You need to be able to coat one end with a reflective mirror surface (facing the inside of the crystal) and the other with similar but only partially reflective surface. This process alone demands very precise control of the density. Then you need a Xenon flash tube of specific output and shape to encircle the crystal, capacitors sufficient to store the charge necessary to activate the tube, and control circuitry. The problems are similar with gas lasers. If you plan to build your own, you'll need glass-blowing skills and a furnace; you'll need means of setting reflective surfaces in the tube to within a perfect parallelism (quarter wavelength tolerances again), a source for the particular gas (helium, neon, carbon dioxide, etc) that you intend to use; a power source and control circuitry, and, of course something to house it in.