Highly stable passively Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser with zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 saturable absorber

Abstract

In this work, a stable and compact passively Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) is demonstrated by employing zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) membrane as the saturable absorber (SA) for the first time. The passively Q-switched pulse train was realized with a maximum repetition frequency of 32.6 kHz. The shortest pulse width of 2.55 μs and a fundamental signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 47 dB were also obtained. The highest average output power was 7.22 mW, corresponding to a maximum single pulse energy of 221.5 nJ. The long term running of the laser was also performed, showing the high stability. Our experiment results support that ZIF-67 nanomaterial has good nonlinear optical properties and superior thermal stability, indicating the great potential in the generation of high energy pulses in the near-infrared region.