A tale of two tantalum borides as potential saturable absorbers for q-switched fiber lasers

Haroldo T. Hattori, Khalil As'Ham*, Ahasanul Haque, Ziyuan Li, Benjamin Olbricht

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In this paper, we analyze the performance of two tantalum-based boride (TaB and TaB-{2}) microparticles as potential saturable absorbers for high-power fiber lasers. Both materials are ultrahigh temperature ceramics with melting points above 3000 °C, but with different crystalline structures: TaB has an orthorhombic structure (nearly isotropic), whereas TaB-{2} has a hexagonal structure (uniaxial, anisotropic). Despite their different crystalline structures, the microparticles have a similar low fluence attenuation (between 2.3 and 2.60 dB/μm) and modulation depths (around 2.0 dB/μm), but remarkable different saturation fluences: TaB has a saturation fluence of 160 μJ/cm2, whereas TaB-{2} has a saturation fluence of 110 μJ/cm2. The measured damage thresholds are 112 and 106 mJ/cm2/pulse for TaB and TaB-{2}, respectively. When incorporated to a fiber laser, the materials produce pulses with durations of 345 ns, lower than those reported by our group in previous papers. The results show that the materials can find potential applications in high-power Q-switched lasers.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number8673547
    JournalIEEE Photonics Journal
    Volume11
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2019

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