Indium Tin Oxide Nanowire Arrays as a Saturable Absorber for Mid-Infrared Er:Ca0.8Sr0.2F2 Laser.

Yuanhao Zhao,Jingjing Liu,Jie Liu,Mengyu Zong,Shouzhen Jiang,Qianqian Peng,Zhen Zhang,Liangbi Su,Jie Zheng

doi:10.3390/nano12030454

Yuanhao Zhao, Jingjing Liu + Show 7 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nano12030454

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Abstract

We demonstrated a passively Q-switched Er:Ca0.8Sr0.2F2 laser with indium tin oxide nanowire arrays as an optical modulator in the mid-infrared region. In the Q-switched regime, the maximum output power of 58 mW with a slope efficiency of 18.3% was acquired. Meanwhile, the minimum pulse duration and highest repetition rate of the stable pulse trains were 490 ns and 17.09 kHz, corresponding to single pulse energy of 3.4 μJ and peak power of 6.93 W, respectively. To the best of our knowledge it was the first time that indium tin oxide nanowire arrays were employed as a saturable absorber to make pulse lasers carried out at 2.8 μm. The experimental data show that indium tin oxide nanowire arrays can be employed as a competitive candidate for saturable absorber in the field of mid-infrared solid-state lasers.

Highlights

Academic Editor: Efrat LifshitzRecently, mid-infrared (MIR) lasers have aroused great interest contributing to a wide range of applications in multifarious aspects, such as strong field physics, atmospheric environmental monitoring, biomedical, communication, military, industry and so forth [1,2,3].A laser at 3 μm is located around the strong absorption peak of H2 O, which was utilized as ideal laser source for high precision laser surgery [4]
We experimentally indicated that ITO-NWAs could perform well as a SA in fiber lasers, and in all-solid-state pulse lasers
On a mica4 of 10 sheet (10 × 10 × 1 mm3 ), the final product of ITO-NWAs was catalyzed by Au nanoparticles and obtained with success by double temperature zone DT-PECVD [43]

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editor: Efrat LifshitzRecently, mid-infrared (MIR) lasers have aroused great interest contributing to a wide range of applications in multifarious aspects, such as strong field physics, atmospheric environmental monitoring, biomedical, communication, military, industry and so forth [1,2,3].A laser at 3 μm is located around the strong absorption peak of H2 O, which was utilized as ideal laser source for high precision laser surgery [4]. Mid-infrared (MIR) lasers have aroused great interest contributing to a wide range of applications in multifarious aspects, such as strong field physics, atmospheric environmental monitoring, biomedical, communication, military, industry and so forth [1,2,3]. The preceding laser system is limited by the size and damage threshold of nonlinear crystals, but is hard to control due to the existence of phase mismatch and high-order dispersion [7]. In the MIR region, Er-doped crystals are known as great gain materials. Calcium fluoride (CaF2 ) crystals are well-known with their representative fluorite structure and strontium fluoride (SrF2 ) crystals possess similar structure. CaF2 , a defect system, has superior properties that trivalent rare-earth dopants possess aggregation phenomena. Dopants can be contained in its structure while the structural integrity will not be destroyed [8]

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