We experimentally demonstrate the fabrication of an allfiberized saturable absorber (SA) suitable for ultrafast modelocking of a fiber laser operating in the 1.9 µm wavelength region, using threedimensional (3D) printing technology. An allfiberized SA was fabricated by 3Dprinting a lowcost composite filament of graphene and polylacticacid (PLA) onto a sidepolished fiber. The measured modulation depths of the fabricated SA are ~5% and ~3.5% at 1.9 µm for the transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes, respectively. Using the SA within a thulium (Tm)holmiumcodoped fiberbased ring cavity, it is shown that mode locked pulses with a temporal width of ~924 fs are readily obtainable. It is believed that this experimental demonstration reaffirms the potential of the graphene/PLA filamentbased 3D printing technique for the fabrication of practical wideband SAs.
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