Zn-MOF as a saturable absorber for thulium/holmium-doped fiber laser

Metal–organic framework (MOF) is a class of material that is highly porous and modular. Due to their unique properties, MOFs have found applications in gas storage, gas separation, sensing, and supercapacitors. [Zn2(H2L)2(1,2-Bis(4-pyridyl)ethene)4]n, zinc (Zn)-based MOF was used in this work to achieve mode-locked operation in a thulium/holmium-doped fiber laser due to its excellent optical absorption at a wavelength of 1925 nm. The saturable absorber (SA) was fabricated by drop-casting a mixture of Zn-MOF and isopropanol on an arc-shaped fiber. The center wavelength of the mode-locked laser is 1906.75 nm, with a maximum average output power of 3.251 mW. The fundamental repetition rate and the pulse width were 12.89 MHz and 1.772 ps. At the same time, the pulse energy and peak power were 252 pJ and 142 W, respectively. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time an MOF has been used for mode-locked pulse generation in a thulium/holmium-doped all-fiber laser. This work extends the use of MOF material as a saturable absorber for mode-locking applications in near-infrared fiber lasers.