Zero-Dimensional MXene-Based Optical Devices for Ultrafast and Ultranarrow Photonics Applications.

Abstract

In recent years, MXene has become a hotspot because of its good conductivity, strong broadband absorption, and tunable band gap. In this contribution, 0D MXene Ti3C2Tx quantum dots are synthesized by a liquid exfoliation method and a wideband nonlinear optical response from 800 to 1550 nm is studied, which have a larger nonlinear absorption coefficient β of –(11.24 ± 0.14) × 10–2 cm GW–1. The carrier dynamic processes of 0D MXene are explored with ultrahigh time resolution nondegenerate transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy, which indicates that the TA signal reaches its maximum in 1.28 ps. Furthermore, 0D MXene is used to generate ultrashort pulses in erbium or ytterbium‐doped fiber laser cavity. High signal‐to‐noise (72 dB) femtosecond lasers with pulse durations as short as 170 fs with spectrum bandwidth of 14.8 nm are obtained. Finally, an ultranarrow fiber laser based on 0D MXene is also investigated and has a full width at half maximum of only 5 kHz, and the power fluctuation is less than 0.75% of the average power. The experimental works prove that 0D MXene is an excellent SA and has a promising application in ultrafast and ultranarrow photonics.