Graphene saturable absorber for diode pumped Yb:Sc2SiO5 mode-locked laser

•We successfully fabricated the graphene by CVD.•The graphene was monolayer and high quality.•Realization of mode-lock of Yb:SSO laser using graphene absorber for the first time.

High-quality monolayer graphene was successfully fabricated by chemical vapor deposition technology. By using the graphene as a saturable absorber, the Yb:Sc2SiO5 crystal passively mode-locked laser was demonstrated for the first time. Stable mode-locked laser pulses were obtained with a repetition rate of 90.7 MHz and an average output power of 480 mW at the center wavelength of 1062.8 nm. The maximum single pulse energy and the maximum peak power were 5.3 nJ and 378 W, respectively.