| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 739420 | Optics & Laser Technology | 2014 | 5 Pages |
•Graphene films with large area were fabricated by the CVD technique.•The graphene films with well-defined layer were used as saturable absorbers.•Mode-locked pulses were realized in a diode-pumped YVO4/Nd:YVO4 laser.•The average output power reached a high value of 1.6 W.
High-quality monolayer graphene films with large area were grown on Cu foils by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique. For the first time, graphene saturable absorbers (SAs) with well-defined layer numbers were fabricated by controlling of transfer process precisely. Using the graphene SAs, stable Q-switched mode-locking pulse trains with a nearly 100% modulation depth were realized in a diode-pumped YVO4/Nd:YVO4 laser. At the pump power of 6.0 W, the average output power reached a high value of 1.6 W. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power of passively mode-locked solid-state laser using graphene SA, suggesting that the low-cost, broadband graphene SA could potentially be employed in practical high-power mode-locking laser system.
