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A passively Q-switched erbium-doped fibre laser was demonstrated by using tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline)aluminium (Alq3) organic material as a passive saturable absorber (SA). The SA was fabricated by a drop casting technique at room temperature and incorporated into a laser cavity by inserting it between two optical fibre ferrules. The Q-switched fibre laser operates at a centre wavelength of 1559 nm with a full-width half maximum of 1 nm. The generated pulse train is stable and has a pulse width decreased from 6.65 to 1.2 I¼s and the pulse repetition rate increased from 31.65 to 144.5 kHz as the pump power increased from 20 to 122 mW. The maximum pulse energy obtained is 63.89 nJ. This work indicates that the Alq3 as SA has a great potential to be utilised for pulsed laser generation. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time an organic material is utilised as a SA device for generating a stable Q-switched laser pulse. © 2019 Institution of Engineering and Technology. All rights reserved.

Q-switched and mode-locked fibre lasers have been successfully demonstrated in ytterbium-doped fibre laser cavity by taking an advantage of the optical absorption of antimony telluride (Sb2Te3) material. The Sb2Te3 was embedded into polyvinyl alcohol to function as a saturable absorber (SA). A Q-switching pulses train was obtained by incorporating the SA into the laser ring cavity configured with 3 dB coupler. The Q-switching pulse repetition rate increases from 24.4 to 55 kHz as the pump power is increased from the threshold of 75.4–96.2 mW. The maximum pulse energy of 252.6 nJ is obtained at 82.3 mW pump power. On the other hand, by changing the output coupler to 10 dB coupler, a stable self-started mode-locking operation was then generated at pump power range from 47.8 to 89.4 mW with a fixed repetition rate of 24.2 MHz. At 89.4 mW pump power, the maximum output power and pulse energy are obtained to be around 18.6 mW and 0.8 nJ, respectively. The authors results display that the Sb2Te3 material could also be developed as an effective SA for both Q-switched and mode-locked fibre lasers.