Indium Tin Oxide Nanowire Arrays as a Saturable Absorber for Mid-Infrared Er:Ca0.8Sr0.2F2 Laser

Yuanhao Zhao; Mengyu Zong; Jie Zheng; Zhen Zhang; Qianqian Peng; Shouzhen Jiang; Jie Liu; Jingjing Liu; Liangbi Su

doi:10.3390/nano12030454

Indium Tin Oxide Nanowire Arrays as a Saturable Absorber for Mid-Infrared Er:Ca_0.8Sr_0.2F₂ Laser

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Jan 28;12(3):454. doi: 10.3390/nano12030454.

Authors

Yuanhao Zhao¹, Mengyu Zong¹, Jie Zheng¹, Zhen Zhang^{2

3}, Qianqian Peng¹, Shouzhen Jiang¹, Jie Liu¹, Jingjing Liu¹, Liangbi Su^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Shandong Provincial Engineering and Technical Center of Light Manipulations and Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optics and Photonic Device, School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Transparent and Opto-Functional Inorganic Materials, Synthetic Single Crystal Research Center (SSCRC), Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201899, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201899, China.

Abstract

We demonstrated a passively Q-switched Er:Ca_0.8Sr_0.2F₂ laser with indium tin oxide nanowire arrays as an optical modulator in the mid-infrared region. In the Q-switched regime, the maximum output power of 58 mW with a slope efficiency of 18.3% was acquired. Meanwhile, the minimum pulse duration and highest repetition rate of the stable pulse trains were 490 ns and 17.09 kHz, corresponding to single pulse energy of 3.4 μJ and peak power of 6.93 W, respectively. To the best of our knowledge it was the first time that indium tin oxide nanowire arrays were employed as a saturable absorber to make pulse lasers carried out at 2.8 μm. The experimental data show that indium tin oxide nanowire arrays can be employed as a competitive candidate for saturable absorber in the field of mid-infrared solid-state lasers.

Keywords: mid-infrared laser; nanowire arrays; passively Q-switched; saturable absorber.

Abstract

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