Mechanical exfoliation of indium tin oxide as saturable absorber for Q-switched Ytterbium-doped and Erbium-doped fiber lasers

Abstract

This work reports mechanically exfoliated indium tin oxide (ITO) as saturable absorber (SA) for Q-switched operation in fiber lasers. The ITO is mechanically exfoliated from 99.99% pure In2O3/SnO2. As ITO has a broad operational wavelength from visible to infrared, indium tin oxide saturable absorber (ITO-SA) is incorporated into ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) and erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) cavity for Q-switched operation. The Q-switched spectrum was observed to be centered at 1038.25 nm for ytterbium-doped fiber and 1557.8 nm for erbium doped fiber. The ITO-SA has a linear absorption of 2.25 dB and 2.5 dB at 1μm and 1.5μm respectively. A narrow pulse width was observed in the EDFL operating at 0.95 μs. For the first time, ITO-SA is incorporated to YDFL cavity.