A Tale of Two Tantalum Borides as Potential Saturable Absorbers for Q-Switched Fiber Lasers

• Main Authors: Haroldo T. Hattori, Khalil As'ham, Ahasanul Haque, Ziyuan Li, Benjamin Olbricht
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2019-01-01
• Series: IEEE Photonics Journal
• Subjects: Optical fiber lasers; Q-switched lasers; optical materials
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8673547/

In this paper, we analyze the performance of two tantalum-based boride (TaB and TaB₂) 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 TaB₂ 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 TaB₂ has a saturation fluence of 110 μJ/cm₂. The measured damage thresholds are 112 and 10⁶ mJ/cm₂/pulse for TaB and TaB₂, 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.