Coco Michael G, Aro Stephen C, McDaniel Sean A, Hendrickson Alexander, Krug James P, Sazio Pier J, Cook Gary, Gopalan Venkatraman, Badding John V
Opt Express. 2020 Sep 28;28(20):30263-30274. doi: 10.1364/OE.402197.
Today fiber lasers in the visible to near-infrared region of the spectrum are well known, however mid-infrared fiber lasers have only recently approached the same commercial availability and power output. There has been a push to fabricate optical fiber lasers out of crystalline materials which have superior mid-IR performance and the ability to directly generate mid-IR light. However, these materials cannot currently be fabricated into an optical fiber via traditional means. We have used high pressure chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD) to deposit Fe:ZnSe into a silica optical fiber template. These deposited structures have been found to exhibit laser threshold behavior and emit CW mid-IR laser light with a central wavelength of 4.12 µm. This is the first reported solid state fiber laser with direct laser emission generated beyond 4 µm and represents a new frontier of possibility in mid-IR laser development.
如今，光谱在可见光到近红外区域的光纤激光器已广为人知，然而中红外光纤激光器直到最近才达到相同的商业可用性和功率输出。人们一直在努力用具有卓越中红外性能和直接产生中红外光能力的晶体材料制造光纤激光器。然而，目前这些材料无法通过传统方法制成光纤。我们已使用高压化学气相沉积（HPCVD）将铁掺杂硒化锌（Fe:ZnSe）沉积到石英光纤模板中。已发现这些沉积结构表现出激光阈值行为，并发射中心波长为4.12微米的连续波中红外激光。这是首次报道的直接激光发射超过4微米的固态光纤激光器，代表了中红外激光发展的一个新的可能性前沿。
