A 2.22-W Passively Q-Switched Tm3+-Doped Laser With a TiC2 Saturable Absorber

A TiC
₂
solution was prepared by using an ultrasonic decomposition and nonlinear saturable absorption characteristics at about 2 μm were evaluated. A passively Q-switched (PQS) Tm:YAP laser was developed using the TiC
₂
material as a saturable absorber, and a 2220-mW average output power with a 579-ns pulse duration at 255 kHz was achieved in PQS mode, corresponding to 8.4% optical conversion efficiency. Also, an 8.7-μJ per pulse energy and a 15.0-W peak power were achieved from this PQS Tm:YAP laser. Furthermore, quality factors of vertical and horizontal beams from the Tm:YAP laser were less than 1.2 under two different modes of operation.