Two-dimensional tellurium saturable absorber for
ultrafast solid-state laser
Zixin Yang (杨子鑫)
1,4
, Lili Han (韩丽莉)
1
, Qi Yang (杨 琦)
1,3*
, Xianghe Ren (任向河)
1**
, Syed Zaheer Ud Din
1
,
Xiaoyan Zhang (张晓艳)
2***
, Jiancai Leng (冷建材)
4
, Jiabao Zhang (张家宝)
1,4
, Baitao Zhang (张百涛)
3
,
Kejian Yang (杨克建)
3
, Jingliang He (何京良)
3
, Chunlong Li (李春龙)
5
, and Jun Wang (王 俊)
6
1
International School for Optoelectronic Engineering, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250300, China
2
Department of Chemistry, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China
3
State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
4
School of Electronic and Information Engineering (Department of Physics), Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences),
Jinan 250300, China
5
State Key Laboratory of Biobased Material and Green Papermaking, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250300, China
6
Key Laboratory of Materials for High-Power Laser, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
*Corresponding author: shanshiyangqi@126.com
**Corresponding author: xhren101@hotmail.com
***Corresponding author: xyzhang_dd@shu.edu.cn
Received December 27, 2020 | Accepted January 12, 2021 | Posted Online February 22, 2021
Two-dimensional (2D) Te nanosheets were successfully fabricated through the liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) method. The
nonlinear optical properties of 2D Te nanosheets were studied by the open-aperture Z-scan technique. Furthermore, the
continuous wave mode-locked Nd:YVO
4
laser was successfully realized by using 2D Te as a saturable absorber (SA) for
the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Ultrashort pulses as short as 5.8 ps were obtained at 1064.3 nm with an output
power of 851 mW. This primary investigation indicates that the 2D Te SA is a promising photonic device in the fields of
ultrafast solid-state lasers.
Keywords: tellurium; Z-scan; saturable absorber; ultrafast solid-state laser.
DOI: 10.3788/COL202119.031401
1. Introduction
Two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted tremendous
attention over the past decade due to their outstanding elec-
tronic and optical properties, which have been widely used in
diverse fields such as energy storage, electroluminescent, transis-
tors, photonics, and biology
[1–7]
. Around 2009, graphene was
initially found to have excellent nonlinear optical properties
[8]
.
Stimulated by the success of graphene, other 2D materia ls such
as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs)
[9–11]
, topological
insulators
[12]
, black phosphorus (BP)
[13–15]
, gold nanomateri-
als
[16–18]
, MXenes
[19]
, graphyne
[20]
, and epsilon-near-zero
(ENZ) materials
[21]
have been intensively researched due to
their excellent nonlinear optical properties. Among the various
2D materials, graphen e has a broad operation wavelength band,
but its weak absorption limits its applications in optoelectronic
devices. TMDs have a tunable bandgap and high carrier mobil-
ity, which have a chemical formula of MX
2
(where X = S, Se,
etc., and M = Mo, W, Re, etc.). However, the intrinsic energy
bandgap of TMDs is in 1–2 eV, which limits their optoelectronic
applications over mid-infrared bands. BP exhibits an outstand-
ing optical modulation effect, but it is easily oxidized, which may
cause dramatic structural transformations. Thus, it is still nec-
essary to make efforts to explore novel 2D materials suitable
for photonic devices. As the group VI elemental mat erial,
tellurium (Te) has attracted extensive attention because of its
distinctive properties, e.g., thermoelectricity, photoconductiv-
ity, and piezoelectricity
[22–24]
. For example, Cao et al.
[25]
reported the solar-blind deep ultraviolet photodetectors based
on Te nanosheets in 2020, which indicate the great potential
of Te nanosheets for high-performance photodetectors.
Elemental Te ordinarily forms a trigonal crystal structure con-
sisting of atomic chains that spiral along with one of the axes of
the crystal lattice. Due to the weak van der Waals interactions,
these helical chains are collected together to construct hexagonal
lattices, leading to the generation of one-dimensional (1D) Te
nanostructures, such as nanowires
[26]
, nanotubes
[27]
, and nano-
belts
[28]
. Compared with 1D nanostructures, 2D Te has the large
Vol. 19, No. 3 | March 2021
© 2021 Chinese Optics Letters 031401-1 Chinese Optics Letters 19(3), 031401 (2021)
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