Generation of ultra-fast pulse based on bismuth saturable absorber

Abstract

We demonstrate a bismuth (Bi) saturable absorber (SA) for generating ultrafast pulse. The Bi SA is fabricated by the Bi film deposited on the surface of microfibers through using magnetron sputtering. Its nonlinear optical properties are investigated. The as-prepared Bi SA has outstanding nonlinear absorption property demonstrated by the open aperture (OA) <i>Z</i>-scan system at 1500 nm and balanced twin-detector method at 1560 nm. The nonlinear optical property of Bi SA shows that the modulation depth, the nonsaturable losses, and the saturable intensity at 1.5 μm are 14% and 79%, and 0.9 MW/cm<sup>2</sup>, respectively. Besides, the closed aperture (CA) <i>Z</i>-scan measurement is also implemented to estimate the nonlinear refractive index of Bi film. The Bi film shows that the typical CA/OA curve possesses the feature of peak-valley profile, meaning that the sample with a negative nonlinear refractive index is self-defocusing. In our experiments, the parameters of the nonlinear absorption coefficient <i>β</i> and the nonlinear refractive index <i>n</i><sub>2</sub> are estimated at about 2.38 × 10<sup>–4</sup> cm/W and –1.47 × 10<sup>–9</sup> cm<sup>2</sup>/W according to the actual experimental data points, respectively. To further investigate its nonlinear optical property, the microfiber-based Bi SA is embedded into an erbium-doped fiber laser with a typical ring cavity structure. Based on the Bi SA device, the stable ultrafast pulses are generated at 1.5 μm with the pulse width of 357 fs, the output power of 45.4 mW, corresponding to the pulse energy of 2.39 nJ, and the signal-to-noise ratio is 84 dB. The stable soliton pulses emitting at 1563 nm are obtained with a 3-dB and 6-nm spectral bandwidth. The experimental results suggest that the microfiber-based Bi SA prepared by magnetron sputtering deposition (MSD) technique can be used as an excellent photonic device for ultrafast pulse generation in the 1.5 μm regime, and the MSD technique opens a promising way to produce high-performance SA with a large modulation depth, low saturable intensity, and high power tolerance, which are conducible to the generation of high power and ultrafast pulse with high stability.

Optoelectronic characteristics and application of black phosphorus and its analogs

“…At present, there are two main fabrication methods, one is called the topdown method, and the other is called the bottom-up method [49][50][51]. The former includes mechanical exfoliation (ME) [52][53][54], liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) [27,43,55], electrochemical exfoliation [51,56], thermal annealing [57], plasma thinning [58,59] and sonochemical exfoliation method [60][61][62][63]; the latter includes chemical vapor deposition (CVD), pulsed laser deposition [64][65][66][67], hydrothermal method [66], van der Waals epitaxy [68,69] and magnetron sputtering deposition (MSD) [48,70]. We will briefly introduce three common preparation methods: ME, LPE and CVD.…”

“…Bulk bismuth is metallic and diamond-shaped in natural state. Studies have shown that when the number of layers is reduced to below 22, bismuth will show the property of topological insulator; when the number of layers is less than 8, it will show the quantum spin Hall phase, and in the case of single layer Bi shows the property of semiconductor [70]. There are many allotropes of Bi such as α-Bi and β-Bi, etc.…”