Passively Q-switched modulation based on antimonene in erbium-doped fiber laser with a long term stability

Antimonene, as a novel two-dimensional material, has received extensive attention in recent years. It has similar properties to most semiconductor materials and has many other materials unmatched characteristics. Herein, we prepare antimonene nanosheets by the liquid-phase exfoliation method, and fabricate antimonene-based saturable absorbers (SA) according to their saturable absorption characteristics and successfully apply them in fiber lasers to achieve stable passively Q-switched output with a center wavelength of 1558 nm. The saturation intensity of antimonene-based SA is 1.52 MW/cm2, and the modulation depth is 11.63% in our experiment. The pulse duration is varied from 5.10 μs to 1.42 μs, and the repetition frequency is changed from 25.6 kHz to 124.1 kHz, with the pump power from 81 mW to 445 mW in the passively Q-switched operation. The experimental results fully reveal the huge potential and nonlinear optical properties of antimonene used in pulsed fiber lasers and expand the scope of new optical applications.