A 113 fs fiber laser operating at 1.56 μm using a cascadable film-type saturable absorber with P3HT-incorporated single-wall carbon nanotubes coated on polyamide

We successfully fabricated a cascadable film-type single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) saturable absorber coated on aromatic polyamide film, in which the saturable absorption effect can be controlled with the number of films. A conductive polymer P3HT (poly-3-hexylthiophene) was adopted to obtain a uniform SWNT solution. We applied saturable absorber films to a passively mode-locked fiber laser and successfully generated a 113 fs, 42 MHz pulse by inserting two film layers between fiber connectors in the cavity. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America