Fabrication of amorphous nanoporous ZrO2/SiO2 aerogel enabling nonlinear optical properties

Amorphous oxides have unique physicochemical properties with extensive opto-electronic applications such as the thin-film transistor, light-emitting diode backplanes, and supercontinuum generation. In this contribution, we synthesize the amorphous ZrO2/SiO2 nanoporous aerogel with high structural integrity. With the femtosecond excitation laser at 800–1064 nm, the broadband second harmonic generation is observed. The nonlinear optical properties of the as-prepared ZrO2/SiO2 aerogel are investigated at 1.0 μm and 1.5 μm for the first time. Subsequently, the amorphous ZrO2/SiO2 saturable absorber is originally applied in the Yb-doped and Er-doped fiber lasers to realize the mode-locking operations. In the Yb-doped fiber laser, the dissipative soliton resonance mode-locking operation is demonstrated with the largest pulse duration of 22 ns at a repetition rate of 7.8 MHz and a high signal-to-noise ratio of 64 dB. In the Er-doped fiber laser, a conventional soliton mod-locking regime is observed with an ultrashort pulse width of 960 fs, a repetition frequency of 6.55 MHz, and a time-bandwidth production of 0.347. Our work shows the good ability of the ZrO2/SiO2 aerogel in generating ultrafast pulses and extends the saturable absorber into the amorphous material realm.