Black phosphorus, a newly emerged two-dimensional material, has attracted wide attention as novel photonic material. Here, multilayer black phosphorus is successfully fabricated by liquid phase exfoliation method. By employing black phosphorus as saturable absorber, we demonstrate a passively Q-switched Er-doped ZBLAN fiber laser at the wavelength of 2.8 μm. The modulation depth and saturation fluence of the black phosphorus saturable absorber are measured to be 15% and 9 μJ/cm(2), respectively. The Q-switched fiber laser delivers a maximum average power of 485 mW with corresponding pulse energy of 7.7 μJ and pulse width of 1.18 μs at repetition rate of 63 kHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to demonstrate that black phosphorus can realize Q-switching of 2.8-μm fiber laser. Our research results show that black phosphorus is a promising saturable absorber for mid-infrared pulsed lasers.

A mid-infrared saturable absorber mirror is successfully fabricated by transferring the mechanically exfoliated black phosphorus onto the gold-coated mirror. With the as-prepared black phosphorus saturable absorber mirror, a continuous-wave passively mode-locked Er:ZBLAN fiber laser is demonstrated at the wavelength of 2.8 μm, which delivers a maximum average output power of 613 mW, a repetition rate of 24 MHz, and a pulse duration of 42 ps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a black phosphorus mode-locked laser at 2.8 μm wavelength has been demonstrated. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of black phosphorus flake as a new two-dimensional material for application in mid-infrared ultrafast photonics.

Field effect relies on the nonlinear current-voltage relation in semiconductors; analogously, materials that respond nonlinearly to an optical field can be utilized for optical modulation. For instance, nonlinear optical (NLO) materials bearing a saturable absorption (SA) feature an on-off switching behavior at the critical pumping power, thus enabling ultrafast laser pulse generation with high peak power. SA has been observed in diverse materials preferably in its nanoscale form, including both gaped semiconductor nanostructures and gapless materials like graphene; while the presence of optical bandgap and small carrier density have limited the active spectral range and intensity. We show here that solution-processed plasmonic semiconductor nanocrystals exhibit superbroadband (over 400 THz) SA, meanwhile with large modulation depth (∼7 dB) and ultrafast recovery (∼315 fs). Optical modulators fabricated using these plasmonic nanocrystals enable mode-locking and Q-switching operation across the near-infrared and mid-infrared spectral region, as exemplified here by the pulsed lasers realized at 1.0, 1.5, and 2.8 μm bands with minimal pulse duration down to a few hundreds of femtoseconds. The facile accessibility and superbroadband optical nonlinearity offered by these nonconventional plasmonic nanocrystals may stimulate a growing interest in the exploiting of relevant NLO and photonic applications.

It attracts wide interest to seek universe saturable absorber covering wavelengths from near infrared to midinfrared band. Multilayer black phosphorus, with variable direct bandgap (0.3-2 eV) depending on the layer number, becomes a good alternative as a universe saturable absorber for pulsed lasers. In this contribution, we first experimentally demonstrated broadband saturable absorption of multilayer black phosphorus from 1 μm to 2.7 μm wavelength. With the as-fabricated black phosphorus nanoflakes as saturable absorber, stable Qswitching operation of bulk lasers at 1.03 μm, 1.93 μm, 2.72 μm were realized, respectively. In contrast with large-bandgap semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides, such as MoS 2 , MoSe 2 , multilayer black phosphorus shows particular advantage at the long wavelength regime thanks to its narrow direct bandgap.This work will open promising optoelectronic applications of black phosphorus in mid-infrared spectral region and further demonstrate that BP may fill the gap of between zero-bandgap graphene and large-bandgap TMDs.Keywords: multilayer black phosphorus; saturable absorber; mid-infrared pulsed laser. IntroductionBlack phosphorus (BP), a layered allotrope of phosphorus, owns its unique properties. Due to puckered layer or zigzag direction of intralayer atoms, the BP crystal exhibits highly anisotropic mechanical properties [1].Moreover, few-layered BP presents highly anisotropic electric conductance and strain-controlled anisotropic electric mobility [2]. By use of its high carrier mobility, few-layer BP has been manufactured into fast fieldeffect transistors (FETs) and opens its electronic applications [3][4]. Similar to MoS 2 , BP also possesses thickness-depended energy bandgap with 1.5-2.0 eV for single layer [5][6][7], 0.59 eV for five layers [8] and 0.3-0.33 eV for bulk sample [1,3]. However, MoS 2 shows a transition from direct bandgap to indirect bandgap once it becomes multilayer while BPs always show direct bandgap property [5]. Such difference would endow multilayer BPs with intrinsically stronger light-matter interaction than multilayer MoS 2 . This might lead to

Ultrafast laser sources operating in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region, which contains the characteristic fingerprint spectra of many important molecules and transparent windows of atmosphere, are of significant importance in a variety of applications. Over the past decade, a significant progress has been made in the development of inexpensive, compact, high-efficiency mid-IR ultrafast mode-locked lasers in the picosecond and femtosecond domains that cover the 2.0 μm–3.5 μm spectral region. These achievements open new opportunities for applications in areas such as molecular spectroscopy, frequency metrology, material processing, and medical diagnostics and treatment. In this review, starting with the introduction of mid-IR mode-locking techniques, we mainly summarize and review the recent progress of mid-IR mode-locked laser sources, including Tm3+-, Ho3+-, and Tm3+/Ho3+-doped all-solid-state and fiber lasers for the 2.0 μm spectral region, Cr2+:ZnSe and Cr2+:ZnS lasers for the 2.4 μm region, and Er3+-, Ho3+/Pr3+-, and Dy3+-doped fluoride fiber lasers for the 2.8 μm–3.5 μm region. Then, some emerging and representative applications of mid-IR ultrafast mode-locked laser sources are presented and illustrated. Finally, outlooks and challenges for future development of ultrafast mid-IR laser sources are discussed and analyzed. The development of ultrafast mid-IR laser sources, together with the ongoing progress in related application technologies, will create new avenues of research and expand unexplored applications in scientific research, industry, and other fields.