Near-stoichiometric LiTaO3 (SLT) and Zn-doped near-stoichiometric LiTaO3 (Zn:SLT) crystals with 10-15 mm in diameter and 10 mm in length were grown by using TSSG technique with K2O as the flux. The effect of adding amount of K2O was discussed in the growing process. The crystals were characterized by inductively coupled plasma-optical emission (ICP-OES), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). The lattice constants of Zn:SLT were smaller than those of SLT and Curie temperature was higher than that of SLT. It was found that Zn doping is an efficient way to improve the optical damage resistance ability of SLT crystal. Compared with SLT crystal, Zn:SLT exhibited a much higher optical damage threshold, more than 500 MW/cm(2), which was attributed to Zn self-compensated effect that formed the charge compensated complexes, (Zn-Ta)(3-)-3(Zn-Li)(+) in SLT crystal. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.