Graphene saturable absorber mirror for ultra-fast-pulse solid-state laser

High-quality graphene sheets with lateral size over 20 mu m have been obtained by bath sonicating after subjecting the wormlike graphite marginally to mixed oxidizer. To date, to our knowledge, they are the largest graphene sheets prepared by exfoliation in the liquid phase. A saturable absorber mirror was fabricated based on these sheets. We exploited it to realize mode-locking operation in a diode-pumped Nd:GdVO(4) laser. A pulse duration of 16 ps was produced with an average power of 360 mW and a highest pulse energy of 8: 4 nJ for a graphene mode-locked laser. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America