Polymer saturable absorber materials in the 1.5 microm band using poly-methyl-methacrylate and polystyrene with single-wall carbon nanotubes and their application to a femtosecond laser

Masataka Nakazawa; Seiji Nakahara; Toshihiko Hirooka; Masato Yoshida; Toshikuni Kaino; Kyoji Komatsu

doi:10.1364/ol.31.000915

Polymer saturable absorber materials in the 1.5 microm band using poly-methyl-methacrylate and polystyrene with single-wall carbon nanotubes and their application to a femtosecond laser

Opt Lett. 2006 Apr 1;31(7):915-7. doi: 10.1364/ol.31.000915.

Authors

Masataka Nakazawa¹, Seiji Nakahara, Toshihiko Hirooka, Masato Yoshida, Toshikuni Kaino, Kyoji Komatsu

Affiliation

¹ Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan. nakazawa@rlec.tohoku.ac.jp

PMID: 16599210
DOI: 10.1364/ol.31.000915

Abstract

We report saturable absorber materials in the 1.5 microm band that consist of poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and polystyrene (PS) polymers with single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). A very uniform dispersion of SWNT in PMMA and PS polymers has been realized by using chlorobenzene or tetrahydrofuran as a dispersion solvent. These materials, which are as thick as 1 mm, are easily optically polished on both surfaces. This was difficult to achieve with previous thin-film materials. By incorporating PMMA/SWNT as a saturable absorber, a 171 fs pulse is successfully generated in a passively mode-locked fiber laser.