Nickel-vanadium layered double hydroxide nanosheets as the saturable absorber for a passively Q-switched 2 µm solid-state laser

Nickel-vanadium (NiV)-layered double hydroxide (LDH) was fabricated into a novel saturable absorber (SA) by the liquid phase exfoliation method and utilized as laser modulator for first time, to our best knowledge. We investigated passive Q -switched Tm:YAG ceramic at 2 µm with NiV-LDH SA. Under an absorbed pump power of 7.2 W, shortest pulse width 398 ns obtained average output 263 mW repetition frequency 101.8 kHz, corresponding single energy 2.30 µJ. The results indicate that SA has great research potential in field modulation.