Microfiber-based few-layer black phosphorus saturable absorber for ultra-fast fiber laser

Abstract

Few-layer black phosphorus (BP), as the most alluring graphene analogue owing to its similar structure as graphene and thickness dependent direct band-gap, has now triggered a new wave of research on two-dimensional (2D) materials based photonics and optoelectronics. However, a major obstacle of practical applications for few-layer BPs comes from their instabilities of laser-induced optical damage. Herein, we demonstrate that, few-layer BPs, fabricated through the liquid exfoliation approach, can be developed as a new and practical saturable absorber (SA) by depositing few-layer BPs with microfiber. The saturable absorption property of few-layer BPs had been verified through an open-aperture z-scan measurement at the telecommunication band and the microfiber-based BP device had been found to show a saturable average power of ~4.5 mW and a modulation depth of 10.9%, which is further confirmed through a balanced twin detection measurement. By further integrating this optical SA device into an erbium-doped fiber laser, it was found that it can deliver the mode-locked pulse with duration down to 940 fs with central wavelength tunable from 1532 nm to 1570 nm. The prevention of BP from oxidation through the 'lateral interaction scheme' owing to this microfiber-based few-layer BP SA device might partially mitigate the optical damage problem of BP. Our results not only demonstrate that black phosphorus might be another promising SA material for ultrafast photonics, but also provide a practical solution to solve the optical damage problem of black phosphorus by assembling with waveguide structures such as microfiber.

15 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Semiconducting Black Phosphorus: Synthesis, Transport Properties and Electronic Applications
• Effective Passivation of Exfoliated Black Phosphorus Transistors against Ambient Degradation
• Layer-dependent Band Alignment and Work Function of Few-Layer Phosphorene

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Black phosphorus: narrow gap, wide applications
• Black phosphorus as saturable absorber for the Q-switched Er:ZBLAN fiber laser at 2.8 μm
• Third-order nonlinear optical response of 2D materials in the telecom band
• An all optical phase shifter and switch near 1550nm using tungsten disulfide (WS2) deposited tapered fiber
• Yb- and Er-doped fiber laser Q-switched with an optically uniform, broadband WS2 saturable absorber
• Lattice dynamics and elastic properties of black phosphorus
• Layer Tunable Third-Harmonic Generation in Multilayer Black Phosphorus
• Current induced by a tilted magnetic field in phosphorene under terahertz laser radiation
• Broadband black phosphorus optical modulator in visible to mid-infrared spectral range
• Large and negative Kerr nonlinearity in PdSe2 dichalcogenide 2D films
• Optoelectronic characteristics and application of black phosphorus and its analogs