Silver nanowires with different concentration for Q-switched fiber lasers

Silver nanowire (AgNW) has become preferred due to its excellent performance in terms of biocompatibility, transparency, heat transfer and conductivity, and thus has been widely used in catalysts, microelectronic devices, sensors, solar cells, etc. Although some related properties of which have aroused great interest, the nonlinear optical properties of AgNW in laser have not been reported so far. In this paper, the nonlinear optical properties of AgNW are explored in Q-switched fiber laser. Additionally, the effects of three different AgNWs on the performance of corresponding Q-switched lasers are investigated. Results show that the concentration, saturation intensity, insertion loss and modulation depth of AgNW have great influence on the performance of lasers. Moreover, compared with similar SA-based lasers, the AgNW-based laser implemented has bright application prospects in the generation of ultrashort pulses. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement