Ytterbium-doped fiber laser passively mode locked by evanescent field interaction with CH3NH3SnI3 perovskite saturable absorber

• Published in: Journal of physics. D, Applied physics Vol. 51; no. 37
• Main Authors: Bao, Xiaozhi, Mu, Haoran, Chen, Yao, Li, Pengfei, Li, Lei, Li, Shaojuan, Qasim, Khan, Zhang, Yupeng, Zhang, Han, Bao, Qiaoliang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 14.08.2018
• Subjects: fiber laser; mode-locking; nonlinear optics; perovskite
• ISSN: 0022-3727; 1361-6463
• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6463/aad71d

Methylammonium tin triiodide (CH3NH3SnI3) as a kind of lead-free perovskite semiconductor materials has emerged as a star material for photonic applications. Herein, for the first time, we demonstrate CH3NH3SnI3 microcrystals grown directly on D-shaped fibers as saturable absorber for generating mode-locked pulses in fiber laser. The saturable absorber device shows a high nonlinear optical modulation depth of 15.2% and considerably low saturation absorption intensity of 76.5 MW cm−2. By incorporating the CH3NH3SnI3 saturable absorber into an ytterbium-doped (Yb-doped) fiber laser, stable mode-locking pulses were produced with a duration of 1.77 ns, maximum output power of 28.19 mW, 3 dB bandwidth of about 8.09 nm and a central wavelength at 1064 nm. The output pulses show representative characteristics of dissipative soliton with excellent long term stability and an energy efficiency of 5.6%. This study may facilitate the development of ultrafast photonic and optoelectronic functional devices based on lead-free perovskites.