Niobium Telluride Absorber for a Mode-Locked Vector Soliton Fiber Laser

Niobium telluride (NbTe2), an emerging transition metal dichalcogenide material, has been theoretically predicted to have nonlinear absorption properties and excellent optical response. However, only a few studies of the utilization of NbTe2 in ultrafast photonics have been reported. In this work, a NbTe2-based saturable absorber (SA) was applied in an erbium-doped fiber as a mode-locked device, and a vector soliton based on NbTe2 was obtained for the first time. NbTe2-PVA film SA was successfully prepared by the liquid-phase exfoliation and spin coating methods, with a modulation depth of up to 10.87