Graphene-Silver Based Passive Q-Switcher

Abstract

Pulsed fiber laser has gain massive attention among researchers. As one of the recognized methods in generating pulsed lasers, passive Q-switching technique in 1.5 micrometer region was used in this work. A graphene-silver composite (Gr-Ag) was integrated as the saturable absorber (SA) in this work. For ease of integration, a free-standing SA film was fabricated by using chitin as the host polymer. The pulsed fiber laser was generated within the input pump power of 135.7 mW to 181.5 mW. Distinct trends of repetition rate and pulse width was observed where the former shows an increasing trend and vice versa for the latter. At 181.5 mW, pulsed laser with repetition rate and pulse width at 59.97 kHz and 2.74 µs, respectively were recorded while the pulse energy and instantaneous peak power were at 5.64 nJ and 1.93 mW, respectively. The findings from this work have shown Gr-Ag SA as a suitable candidate in Q-switched pulsed laser generation.