Host matrix effect on the near infrared saturation performance of graphene absorbers

A comparative research on the near infrared performance of three kinds of widely used graphene saturable absorbers, namely, graphene polymer composite films, neat graphene films and graphene dispersions, was performed by using Z-scan technique with 340 fs pulses at 1030 nm. The polymer films and graphene films were fabricated through solution cast method and vacuum filtration technique based on the liquid-phase exfoliated graphene dispersions, respectively. The polymer films reveal the best saturable absorption (SA) response and the lowest saturation intensity Is, in comparison with the neat films and dispersions. The graphene films show the largest SA coefficient and figure of merit due to its highest linear absorption coefficient and refractive index. By employing slow SA modeling, the excited state and ground state absorption cross sections were estimated to be similar to 10(-17) cm(2), and the ratio were 0.61, 0.57 and 0.71 for the dispersions, polymer films and neat films, respectively. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America