| Summary: | We successfully demonstrate the generation of nanosecond pulses in a passively Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) by an Ag2S-based saturable absorbeer (SA). A simple and low-cost liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) method is used to fabricate the SA. Through LPE, the SA element is coated onto a thin film of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), which serves as the host material. The Ag2S SA film exhibits good nonlinear absorption characteristics to give it strong potential as an ideal SA. It has a modulation depth of 25.3% and a saturation intensity of 1.11 MW/cm2. The laser is able to generate a self-started mode-locked pulse at a threshold pump power of 145.83 mW with a fundamental repetition rate of 0.98 MHz and a pulse duration of 256 ns, respectively. At the maximum pump power, the laser delivers a pulse energy of 2.08 nJ and an output power of 2.11 mW. This demonstration suggests that Ag2S SA has good capacity for generating nanosecond mode-locked lasers in the C-band region. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.
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