Liquid metal as a broadband saturable absorber for passively Q -switched lasers

We demonstrated the efficient plasmon-induced nonlinear absorption of liquid metal GaInSn nanospheres prepared by a facile liquid-phase method. With GaInSn as saturable absorbers, a passively Q-switching operation was obtained at both 1.3 and 2 μm. The pulse width of 32 ns was achieved at 1.3 μm with repetition rate of 44 kHz, single pulse energy of 51.9 μJ, and output power of 425 mW. Meanwhile, 510 ns and 92 kHz pulses with energy of 36.1 μJ and output power of 2.48 W were obtained at 2 μm. This work provides the potential of liquid metal for improving metal functions and flexible optical devices.