A Filmy Black-Phosphorus Polyimide Saturable Absorber for Q-Switched Operation in an Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser

Tianxian Feng; Dong Mao; Xiaoqi Cui; Mingkun Li; Kun Song; Biqiang Jiang; Hua Lu; Wangmin Quan

doi:10.3390/ma9110917

A Filmy Black-Phosphorus Polyimide Saturable Absorber for Q-Switched Operation in an Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser

Materials (Basel). 2016 Nov 11;9(11):917. doi: 10.3390/ma9110917.

Authors

Tianxian Feng¹, Dong Mao², Xiaoqi Cui³, Mingkun Li⁴, Kun Song⁵, Biqiang Jiang⁶, Hua Lu⁷, Wangmin Quan⁸

Affiliations

¹ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. txfeng@139.com.
² MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. maodong@nwpu.edu.cn.
³ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. xq_cui@mail.nwpu.edu.cn.
⁴ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. 2012302868@mail.nwpu.edu.cn.
⁵ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. songkun@nwpu.edu.cn.
⁶ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. bqjiang@nwpu.edu.cn.
⁷ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. hualu@nwpu.edu.cn.
⁸ MOE Key Laboratory of Space Applied Physics and Chemistry, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China. quanwangmin@nwpu.edu.cn.

Abstract

We demonstrate an erbium-doped fiber laser passively Q-switched by a black-phosphorus polyimide film. The multi-layer black-phosphorus (BP) nanosheets were prepared via a liquid exfoliation approach exploiting N-methylpyrrolidone as the dispersion liquid. By mixing the BP nanosheets with polyimide (PI), a piece of BP-PI film was obtained after evaporating the mixture in a petri dish. The BP-PI saturable absorber had a modulation depth of 0.47% and was inserted into an erbium-doped fiber laser to realize passive Q-switched operations. The repetition rate of the Q-switched laser increased from 5.73 kHz to 31.07 kHz when the laser pump was enhanced from 31.78 mW to 231.46 mW. Our results show that PI is an excellent host material to protect BP from oxidation, and the BP-PI film can act as a promising nonlinear optical device for laser applications.

Keywords: Q-switched fiber lasers; black-phosphorus; saturable absorber.