Black phosphorus as saturable absorber for the Q-switched Er:ZBLAN fiber laser at 2.8 μm

Black phosphorus, a newly emerged two-dimensional material, has attracted wide attention as novel photonic material. Here, multilayer black phosphorus is successfully fabricated by liquid phase exfoliation method. By employing black phosphorus as saturable absorber, we demonstrate a passively Q-switched Er-doped ZBLAN fiber laser at the wavelength of 2.8 mu m. The modulation depth and saturation fluence of the black phosphorus saturable absorber are measured to be 15% and 9 mu J/cm(2), respectively. The Q-switched fiber laser delivers a maximum average power of 485 mW with corresponding pulse energy of 7.7 mu J and pulse width of 1.18 mu s at repetition rate of 63 kHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to demonstrate that black phosphorus can realize Q-switching of 2.8-mu m fiber laser. Our research results show that black phosphorus is a promising saturable absorber for mid-infrared pulsed lasers. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America