The Advanced Photonics Materials and Devices research team at the College of Electronic Science and Engineering, JLU, independently published an article in Nature Communications on July 29, 2024.

The article, Voltage-controlled nonlinear optical properties in gold nanofilms via electrothermal effect, demonstrated its significant progress in the voltage-controlled nonlinear optical properties in gold nanofilms and relevant applications in widely tunable ultrafast fiber lasers.

The first author is doctoral student LYU Changjian from the College of Electronic Science and Engineering. Professors MENG Fanchao, JIA Zhixu, and QIN Guanshi are the co-corresponding authors.

According to the article, gold nanomaterials have shown unprecedented possibilities in nonlinear optics, quantum optics, nano-optics, and biomedicine. However, the current technology for preparing ultra-thin, smooth, and continuous gold nanofilms still needs to be developed, and research on voltage control of their nonlinear optical properties needs to be completed.

In response to the above issues, the research team conducted systematic research and developed a voltage-controlled all-fiber gold nanofilm saturable absorber, achieving wavelength tuning and mode-locking state switching of mode-locked fiber lasers.

This work provides a new method for controlling the operations of nonlinear optical devices and ultrafast fiber laser devices.