Gold nanobipyramids as saturable absorbers for passively Q-switched laser generation in the 1.1 μm region.

We demonstrated that gold nanobipyramids (Au-NBPs) can be used as saturable absorbers for ultrafast pulsed-laser application, for the first time. Au-NBPs are prepared through a seed-mediated growth method, and performance is investigated in a passively Q-switched Nd:YVO4 laser. In the Q-switched operation the maximum average output power that can be achieved is 151 mW. The minimum pulse width is 396 ns at a pulse repetition rate of 90.6 kHz.