Ultrafast erbium-doped fiber laser mode-locked with a black phosphorus saturable absorber

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate a passive mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) using a multi-layer black phosphorus saturable absorber (BPSA). The BPSA is fabricated by mechanically exfoliating a BP crystal and sticking the acquired BP flakes onto scotch tape. A small piece of the tape is then placed between two ferrules and integrated into an EDFL cavity to achieve a self-started soliton mode-locked pulse operation at 1560.7 nm wavelength. The 3 dB bandwidth, pulse width, and repetition rate of the laser are 6.4 nm, 570 fs, and 6.88 MHz, respectively. The average output power is 5.1 mW at pump power of 140 mW and thus, the pulse energy and peak power are estimated at 0.74 nJ and 1.22 kW, respectively. The BPSA was constructed in a simple fabrication process and has a modulation depth of 7% to successfully produce the stable mode-locked fiber laser.

Femtosecond mode‐locked erbium‐doped fibre laser with Alq 3 saturable absorber

“…The figure illustrates a saturation intensity of 3.1 MW/cm 2 and modulation depth of ∼8.13%. The non‐linear transmission characterisation is similar to other SAs such as BP [41], Bi 2 Te 3 [42], MoS 2 [43] and SWCNT [44]. The inset figure presents a scanning electron microscopy image of the thin film; it shows a homogenous and uniform distribution of Alq 3 within PVA.…”

Black Phosphorus Saturable Absorber for Pulse Generation Using Q-switched Teachnique

“…According to the compactness, simplicity and flexibility design, passive technique of acquiring Qswitched pulses have more attention compared to active technique. Pulses can be found using various kinds of saturable absorbers including graphene oxide, Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), Semiconductor Saturable Absorption mirrors (SESAMs), and Carbon Nano-Tube (CNT) [1][2][3]. However, these saturable absorbers have a number of drawbacks in terms of their fabrications and compatibility with some optical fiber applications, it also suffers low pulse energy with a wide band gap between layers.…”

“…As the result of graphene limitations, transition-metal dichalcogenides have been studied due to their result of special absorbing and relying on bandgap thickness. BP saturable absorber has joined the family of 2D material with more efficient than the above-mentioned SA in terms of band gap filling [1][2][3][4].…”

“…Recently, we had a large increase in the number of practical applications requiring Erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser as the gain medium due to the possibility of more output power at higher gains and their flexible in usage and design [1][2][3]. Ismail et al demonstrated Q-switched pulse using EDFL as a gain medium and BP [1].…”

“…Ultra-short pulse generation using multi-layer black phosphorus SA based on erbium doped active fiber [2]. Ahmed et al [3] proposed passive mode-locked pulse with BP saturable absorber. However, 37 a loss of the average output power has shown, while the pulse energy and peak power are decaying.…”