Nanowerk January 19, 2021
Conventional optical-fiber-based pulsed lasers have limits to increasing the number of pulses per second above the MHz level. Researchers in South Korea inserted an additional resonator containing graphene into a fiber-optic pulsed-laser oscillator that operates in the domain of femtoseconds (10-15 seconds). This increased data transmission and processing speeds significantly. They synthesized graphene, which has the characteristics of absorbing and eliminating weak light and amplifying the intensity by passing only strong light into the resonator. This allows the laser intensity change to be accurately controlled at a high rate, and thus the repetition rate of pulses could be increased to a higher level. By forming graphene directly onto the surface of a copper wire and further covering the wire with an optical fiber for its use as a resonator they were able to obtain a repetition rate of 57.8 GHz…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Graphene synthesized directly on the surface of a Cu wire acts as a hub for diameter-controlled micro-fibers to form the ring resonator. Credit: KIST