SiO2 passivated TaS2 saturable absorber mirrors for the ultrafast pulse generation

Since its inception as the cornerstone of the ultrafast pulse laser, semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) have attracted considerable interest. Meanwhile, low-dimensional (LD) materials based saturable absorbers (SAs) are gaining popularity in pulsed laser applications due to their high nonlinearity, strong light-matter interaction, and low cost. Here, high-quality LD-SAs have been created by transferring 2 H-TaS2 onto gold mirrors and covered with plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) SiO2 layers. The non-linear transmission of SiO2 passivated TaS2-SAM was measured using a balanced dual-detector technology. The modulation depth and saturated intensity were -8.4% and 0.86 MW center dot cm-2. Based on the SiO2 passivated TaS2-SAM, Q-switched and mode-locked Erbium-doped (Er3+-doped) fiber pulse lasers have been successfully achieved. Stable soliton pulses are obtained in erbium-doped fiber lasers (EDFLs) with pulse width of 1.8 ps, repetition rate of 3.4 MHz and a center wavelength of 1560.6 nm. Moreover, the modelocking laser exhibited long-term stability with high signal-to-noise ratio of 63 dB. This study serves as a standard for low-dimensional materials research in photonics applications, and the results reveal that TaS2SAM has a wide range of applications in multifunctional all-fiber lasers.