Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 219 (2020) 165234

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Optik
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Short note

Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser with silicon oxycarbide

T
saturable absorber
B. Nizamania, F.A. Memonb, Z.A. Umarc, S. Salama,d, M.M. Najma,
M.I.M. Abdul Khuduse, E. Hanafia, M.A. Baigc, S.W. Haruna,f,*
a
Photonics Engineering Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
b
Department of Telecommunications Engineering, Mehran University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro, 76062, Pakistan
c
Atomic and Laser Physics Department (ALPD), National Centre for Physics (Ncp), Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan
d
Faculty of Information Technology, Imam Ja’afar Al-Sadiq University, Baghdad, Iraq
e
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
f
Department of Engineering, Faculty of Vocational Studies, Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: We have experimentally demonstrated a Q-switched erbium doped fiber laser (EDFL) by using
Silicon oxycarbide silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) as saturable absorber (SA). The SiOC was prepared by reactive RF
Passive saturable absorber magnetron sputtering before being mechanically exfoliated and inserted in cavity to generate Q-
Q-switching switched pulses operating at 1561.7 nm. Pulses as short as 2.1 μs were generated at the repetition
Fiber laser
rate of 96.7 kHz, having signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 70 dB. The Q-switched EDFL pulses re-
mained stable between pump powers of 111.5−198 mW. At the pump power value of 198 mW,
the Q-switched EDFL generated pulses with output power of 2.4 mW and high pulse energy of
about 25 nJ. For the first time SiOC is introduced to be used as a SA in the EDFL cavity for Q-
switched laser sources.

1. Introduction

Q-switched fiber lasers have attracted substantial attention due to its promising applications in medicine, material processing,
remote sensing and telecommunication [1–4]. Q-switching may be achieved by active and passive methods. Active techniques require
elements such as lenses, mirror and electro-optic modulator (active device). These elements would introduce unwanted loss and
require an external signal for active devices to operate. On the other hand, passive techniques use nonlinear absorption materials
called saturable absorber (SA) incorporated into the fiber laser cavity to act as a Q-switcher. Passive techniques are preferred for
pulsed laser generation rather than active technique as they are flexible, easier to be incorporated, cost-effective and induce a lower
loss. Insertion of an SA to the laser cavity is achieved by a variety of methods, such as by sandwiching it between the fiber-ferule or by
depositing SA material on a D-shape fiber [5,6]. Extensive studies have been reported in the literature for demonstrating suitable SAs.
Semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) were the first reported as SA [7]. Although SESAMs have good stability, they
generally have a small wavelength operating range and complication to fabricate, thus limiting the use of SESAMs. Carbon nanotubes
(CNTs) have been successfully used SAs due to their wider operational wavelength, high damage threshold and fast recovery time of
less than 1 ps [8]. However, CNTs require precise bandgap engineering, which limited its operation at certain wavelengths [9].

⁎
Corresponding author at: Photonics Engineering Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia.
E-mail address: [email protected] (S.W. Harun).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2020.165234
Received 15 April 2020; Received in revised form 2 July 2020; Accepted 8 July 2020
0030-4026/ © 2020 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
B. Nizamani, et al. Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 219 (2020) 165234

Fig. 1. Preparation of SiOC film by reactive RF magnetron sputtering.

Graphene has been successfully used as SA having high performance abilities as a SA in a wider operation band expanding to near-IR
region [10]. However, graphene has the disadvantages of zero bandgap and low modulation per layer which limited its capability in
several applications.
Recently, many other emerging SA materials are reported to be suitable for the generation of pulsed lasers such as black phos-
phorus (BP), topology insulators (TI) (Bi2Te3 and Bi2Se3) and transition metal-dichalcogenides (TMDs) [11–15]. Generally, these
materials are cost-effective and easy to be fabricated. Developing high-performance SAs from new materials are of great research
interest, as the development of SAs has always brought several new opportunities for pulsed fiber lasers technology [16]. In that
respect, silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) has been shown to be as an interesting material in the scientific community due to its physical,
mechanical, optical and chemical properties. These properties can be widely and controllably tailored through variation in com-
position. SiOC has been adopted in several fields of application, such as anode material for Li-ion batteries [17], dielectric material
for interlayer dielectrics [18], photoluminescence [19] and electroluminescence [20]. Additionally, SiOC thin films can be easily
produced, as it has been prepared by using different deposition techniques under various pre- and post-deposition conditions [21]. In
our previous work [22,23], we showed that sputtered SiOC films with refractive index from 1.45 to 3.0 exhibit high transparency
(low extinction coefficient) over the broad wavelength range from 800 nm to 2000 nm. SiOC waveguides with a tunable refractive
index ranging from 1.57 to 2.2 have been demonstrated with low propagation losses of about 2 dB/cm. Further, the thermal be-
haviour of SiOC photonic devices with n = 2.2 on the standard telecom wavelength λ =1550 nm is found at the order of 10−4 RIU
°C-1, which is highest reported amongst the dielectric platforms. With its appealing properties, a novel material SiOC is proposed as a
new SA for erbium-doped fiber lasers (EDFL).

2. Fabrication and characterization of SiOC SA

The SiOC deposition was carried out using reactive radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering deposition method as shown in
Fig. 1. The process was carried out at room temperature from a 99.9 % pure 4 in.’ diameter silicon carbide (SiC) target material. For
the deposition of SiOC, high purity argon (Ar) and oxygen (O2) were used as plasma and reactive gases, respectively. The flow rates of
Ar and O2 gases at 20 sccm and 1 sccm were maintained by mass flow controllers, and the RF power was fixed at 300 W with
negligible reflected power during the SiOC deposition. The sputter chamber was pumped down to high vacuum condition with base
pressure less than 10−5 Pa. The 525 nm thick SiOC film was deposited on a silicon (100) substrate. The deposition was run for 20 min
and the rate of deposition was about 26 nm/min. Fig. 1 shows SiOC film, which was obtained based on reactive RF magnetron
sputtering process.
The morphology of the SiOC thin film was then characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force micro-
scope (AFM) as shown in Fig. 2(a) and (b) respectively. The deposited SiOC film showed smooth homogenous morphology and the
thickness was determined to be 525 nm. The rms roughness of the SiOC surface was measured to be about 0.5 nm.
The SiOC was then mechanically exfoliated to be used as a SA. Mechanical exfoliation is a low cost, simple and reliable technique
which has been reported effective technique for graphene and black phosphorus [24,25]. First, the SiOC film was taken as shown in
Fig. 3(a), it was then carefully extracted from the substrate by using a blade before being crushed and converted to bulk flakes in a
crusher as shown in Fig. 3(b). The SiOC flakes were then further processed by placing it on scotch tape as shown in Fig. 3(c). The layer
over scotch tape was folded and pressed to ensure equal distribution of SiOC flakes. A 1 mm2 of the silicon oxycarbide saturable
absorber (SiOC-SA) was incorporated into the EDFL cavity by sandwiching between two fiber ferrules; see Fig. 3(d).
Fig. 4(a) shows an elemental analysis of mechanically exfoliated SiOC-SA. The characterization was performed using energy
dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) that shows the presence of silicon (Si), oxygen (O) and carbon (C) peaks only with no additional
impurities. The absence of impurity indicated that sputtering chamber properly pumped down and exfoliation environment was

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B. Nizamani, et al. Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 219 (2020) 165234

Fig. 2. Characterization of SiOC film (a) SEM morphology (b) AFM topology.

Fig. 3. Mechanical exfoliation of SiOC (a) thin film (b) flakes in the crusher (c) SiOC over the scotch tape (d) SiOC over fiber ferrule.

Fig. 4. (a) EDS analysis of SiOC-SA (b) Linear absorption of SiOC-SA.

clean. The composition of elements in the mechanically exfoliated SiOC is quantified in atomic percent as Si (60 at. %), C (25 at. %)
and O (15 at. %) with an error of ± 2%. The higher Si atomic percentage is possibly due to the traces of Si substrate during the
manual peeling process of SiOC. The linear absorption of SiOC-SA was recorded by using an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) in the
wavelength range of 1200 nm–1650 nm as shown in Fig. 4(b). The linear absorption of SiOC-SA was observed to be uniform of
∼1.9 dB in the range of 1200 nm–1650 nm. This further validates the ability of SA to generate Q-switching.

3. Cavity configuration of erbium-doped fiber laser

Fig. 5 illustrates the cavity configuration of proposed Q-switched laser setup. A 980 nm laser diode (LD) was employed to pump
the laser cavity. The LD is incorporated to the EDFL cavity by 980 nm port of a 980/1550 nm wavelength division multiplexing
(WDM) coupler. The output from the WDM coupler is connected to a 2-m erbium-doped fiber (EDF) with a core diameter of 4 μm,
group velocity dispersion (GVD) of 27.6 ps2/km, numerical aperture of 0.16 and absorption of 23 dB/m at pumping wavelength of
980 nm. The other end of the EDF is connected to polarization independent isolator (PI-ISO) to avoid birefringence and have uni-
directional propagation of signal. The prepared SiOC-SA was sandwiched between two fiber ferules after PI-ISO. The output from
SiOC-SA is then connected to a 95/5 coupler. Standard single-mode fiber (SMF-28) is used as all the fibers inside cavity. The cavity
length is measured to be about 6 m. Q-switched operation is recorded at 5% output port of the coupler. A 350 MHz digital oscillo-
scope (GWINSTEK: GDS-3352) along with InGaAs fast photodetector (Thorlabs: DET01CFC), and optical spectrum analyzer (OSA)
(MS9710C) were used to monitor the temporal evolution of output pulse train and to analyse the optical spectrum. The photodetector
had a bandwidth of 1.2 GHz, the damage threshold of 70 mW and operational spectral range of 800−1700 nm. A 7.8 GHz radio
frequency spectrum analyser (RFSA) (Anritsu: MS2683A) with same fast photodetector is used to measure RF spectrum. Optical

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B. Nizamani, et al. Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 219 (2020) 165234

Fig. 5. Erbium-doped fiber laser cavity setup.

power meter (OPM) (Thorlabs: PM100D) is connected at the output to record the output power.

4. Results and discussion

The output optical spectrum of the laser was first observed before inserting SA to the cavity. Continuous-wave (CW) lasing
operation was achieved at the threshold pump power of 25 mW. After incorporating the SiOC-SA in the cavity, self-started Q-
switching appeared at a pump power of 111.5 mW. The Q-switched lasing remained stable in the pump power range between
111.5 mW–198 mW. As the pump power was increased above 198 mW, the pulse train disappeared, and CW operation was resumed.
As we turned the pump power back to 198 mW, the Q-switched pulse recovered with the same temporal performances. It is worthy to
note that the SA can sustain the maximum attainable pump power of 270 mW pump power. We also directly launched the pump laser
into the SiOC-SA device and no damage was observed. This shows that the SiOC has an excellent thermal stability and its optical
damage threshold is above 270 mW. As shown in Fig. 6(a), the developed Q-switched laser operates at a central wavelength of
1561.7 nm with a 3 dB bandwidth of 0.7 nm. The central wavelength is shifted to a shorter wavelength from 1568.6 nm of a CW
regime at the pump power of 198 mW, which is due to the loss induced by the SA. RF spectrum of Q-switched laser at 198 mW pump
power is shown in Fig. 6 (b). The fundamental frequency is measured to be 96.7 kHz with a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 70 dB.
The appearance of more than 10 pulses in the frequency spectrum shows the stability of the developed laser.
The pulse train of Q-switched laser is experimentally obtained from the digital oscilloscope as shown in Fig. 7. We investigated a
long-range pulse train at pump power from 111.1 mW–198 mW. Pulse shape and pulse amplitude are observed to be uniform with an
increasing repetition rate from 89.93 kHz to 96.7 kHz, when the pump power was increased from 111.1 mW–198 mW. A homogenous
pulse train is observed at the four different pump power values of 111.1 mW, 152.2 mW, 177.7 mW and 198 mW. The pulse train
obtained at the pump power of 198 mW shows a symmetric pulse shape with a repetition rate of 96.7 kHz, a pulse width of 2.1 μs and
a pulse interval of 10 μs. Fig. 8 shows evolution of output spectrum of the Q-switched laser as observed for 6 h over the OSA at
198 mW pump power. Under the normal laboratory conditions, no shift in centre wavelength peak was observed. Peak amplitude
remained stable with a negligible variation of ± 0.1 dB. The optical signal to noise ratio of 70 dB was maintained during this period,
while the pulse width remained the same as 2.1 μs.
The obtained repetition rate and pulse width is plotted against pump power in Fig. 9(a). Repetition rate increased from 89.93 kHz
to 96.7 kHz, while the pulse width decreased from 3.5 μs to 2.1 μs. The behaviour of the repetition rate and pulse width against the
input pump power is a typical feature of passive Q-switching. Pulse energy and output power of the fiber laser are measured and
plotted in Fig. 9(b). Output power increased from 1.6 mW to 2.4 mW at the pump power range of 111.1 mW–198 mW and the pulse
energy increased from 18 nJ to 25 nJ within the same pump power range of Q-switched operation. Q-switched laser presented in this
work shows the SiOC-SA has a comparative performance. As compared to few recent studies, the Q-switching performance of laser in
terms of SNR and pulse energy is improved [26,27]. We believe that the developed SA can produce an enhanced result given that the

Fig. 6. Q-switched pulse laser at 198 mW pump power (a) Optical spectrum (b) frequency spectrum.

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B. Nizamani, et al. Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 219 (2020) 165234

Fig. 7. Stability of pulse train at a pump power of 111.1 mW, 152.2 mW, 177.7 mW and 198 mW.

Fig. 8. Stability of optical spectrum for 6 h.

Fig. 9. Q-switched pulse laser performance against pump power variation (a) repetition rate and pulse width (b) output power and pulse energy.

cavity setup is enhanced, such as using a smaller cavity length and a better gain medium.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, we demonstrated a Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser based on SiOC as an SA. The SiOC thin-film was obtained
by RF magnetron sputtering and then it was mechanically exfoliated and inserted in the EDFL cavity. The linear absorption of the
proposed SA was assessed to be 1.9 dB. The SA successfully generated a stable Q-switched pulse laser operating at a wavelength of
1561.7 nm. The highest repetition rate and the shortest pulse width were 96.7 kHz and 2.1 μs, respectively. Additionally, the laser

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B. Nizamani, et al. Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 219 (2020) 165234

produced a very stable performance with SNR of 70 dB. This study reports the introduction of a novel material SiOC as a newly
developed SA in passive fiber laser technology.

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgment

We would like to acknowledge the University of Malaya for financial support (Grant No: FP068-2019A).

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