We investigated the optimized sensitizing effect of Ce/Cr/Nd:YAG material for solar-pumped solid-state lasers using the sol-gel synthetic YAG powder method. After a parameter mapping survey on Ce3+ and Cr3+ additives in Nd:YAG for the sensitizing effect on sunlight, we found that the most efficient composition of Ce/Cr/Nd:YAG is where Ce3+ and Cr 3+ were 0.9 and 8.0 mol% respectively, when the Nd3+ concentration was 1.0 mol% and the sensitizing effect of the optimized Ce/Cr/Nd:YAG was increased four times more than the Cr/Nd:YAG one. This result indicates that Ce3+ can work as an effective sensitizer to Nd 3+ and optimized Ce/Cr/Nd:YAG ceramics can be useful to construct a space solar power system using a laser in space. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.