In the current paper, the nonlinear absorption characteristics and laser modulation performance of the ternary anisotropic semiconductor material ZrGeTe4 were successfully explored. The recovery time of the ZrGeTe4-PVA thin film was measured to be 5.74 ps by the pump–probe technology. By employing ZrGeTe4 as a saturable absorber, a passive mode-locked Yb-doped fiber laser was demonstrated for the first time. In the 1 µm mode-locked operation, the central wavelength was 1031.29 nm, the pulse repetition rate was 24.85 MHz, and the pulse width was 786.3 ps. In an Er-doped fiber laser operating at a wavelength of 1561.10 nm, the pulse width was as short as 1.26 ps with a repetition rate of 4.38 MHz. The results show that ZrGeTe4 has excellent broadband nonlinear optical characteristics.
Shang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.