Few-layer bismuthene for femtosecond soliton molecules generation in Er-doped fiber laser

Abstract

Bismuthene, a mono-elemental two-dimensional material with a novel kind of few-layer structure purely consisting of bismuth, has been predicted to have a prominent optical response and enhanced stability in theory. In this paper, few-layer bismuthene is employed as the saturable absorber. The mode-locker is fabricated by dropping bismuthene on a microfiber in a passively mode-locked, Er-doped fiber laser. The single pulse can be obtained at 122.1 mW, with 621.5 fs pulse duration at 1557.5 nm central wavelength, 10.35 nm spectral width and fundamental repetition of 22.74 MHz. Thanks to the outstanding nonlinear effect and semimetal of the bismuthene, dual-pulses, octonary-pulses and fourteen-pulses soliton molecules with tightly and loosely temporal separation can be achieved for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The preceding indicates that bismuthene will have wide potential in many applications, such as optical fiber communications, optical logical gate, and laser materials processing, etc.

2D Layered Materials: Synthesis, Nonlinear Optical Properties, and Device Applications

“…Recent studies found that MXene, antimonene, bismuthene, and metal‐organic framework (MOF) have also excellent saturable absorption property and can be used in mode‐locked/Q‐switched lasers. For example, the researchers achieved the soliton mode‐locked fiber laser based on MXene, antimonene, and Ni‐MOF, respectively.…”

Emerging Applications of Elemental 2D Materials

“…In addition to having excellent mechanical properties, bismuthene is a narrow bandgap semiconductor and is stable at high temperatures . Few layer bismuthene has been used as SAs in mode‐locked fiber lasers, producing stable fs pulses ≈1550 nm . Among other group V elements, antimonene has also been used as an SA in passive Q‐switched lasers and shown stable ns pulse widths for laser emission at 946, 1064, and 1342 nm .…”

Solution-processed two-dimensional materials for ultrafast fiber lasers (invited)

“…However, the existing 2DM-based SAs also have their own shortcomings. In order to overcome the existing shortcomings of 2DMs and achieve wide applications in industry, some other mono-elemental 2D materials, such as antimonene and bismuthene, have attracted more attention [225][226][227][228][229][230][231][232][233]. In 2017, Song et al experimentally investigated the broadband non-linear optical response of few-layer antimonene as SA, and obtained ~550-fs pulses in an Erdoped fiber laser [225].…”