Three-dimensional graphene based passively mode-locked fiber laser

We present an all-fiber passively mode-locked fiber laser incorporating three-dimensional (3D) graphene as a saturable absorber (SA) for the first time to the best of our knowledge. The 3D graphene is synthesized by template-directed chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The SA is then simply formed by sandwiching the freestanding 3D graphene between two conventional fiber connectors without any deposition process. It is demonstrated that such 3D graphene based SA is capable to produce high quality mode-locked pulses. A passively mode-locked fiber laser is constructed and stable output pulses with a fundamental repetition rate of similar to 9.9 MHz and a pulse width of similar to 1 ps are generated from the fiber laser. The average output power of the laser is similar to 10.5 mW while the output pulse is operating at single pulse region. The results imply that the freestanding 3D graphene can be applied as an effective saturable absorption material for passively mode-locked lasers. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America