Two-dimensional (2D) materials show great promise as saturable absorbers (SAs) for ultrafast fiber lasers. However, the relatively low modulation depth and poor stability of some 2D materials, such as graphene and black phosphorus, restrict their applications in the mid-infrared pulse generation. Herein, we first report a novel 2D double transition metal carbide, denoted as Mo2Ti2C3Tx MXene, as the saturable absorber (SA) for a passively Q-switched mid-infrared fiber laser. Due to the unique four-metal atomic layer structure, the Mo2Ti2C3Tx exhibits superior saturable absorption properties, particularly with a higher modulation depth (40% at 2796 nm) than most of the other reported 2D SA materials. After incorporating the MXene SA with an erbium-doped fiber system, the passively Q-switched pulses were achieved with a repetition rate of 157.3 kHz, the shortest pulse width of 370 ns, and single-pulse energy of 1.92 μJ, respectively. Such results extend the MXene-based SAs as promising candidates for advanced photonic devices.
Keywords: MXenes; double transition metal carbides; mid-infrared laser; nonlinear optics; saturable absorber.