2018-10-23, Loiko, Pavel, Bora, Tanujjal, Serres, Josep Maria, Yu, Haohai, Aguiló, Magdalena, Díaz, Francesc, Griebner, Uwe, Petrov, Valentin, Mateos, Xavier, Dutta, Joydeep

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods (NRs) oriented along the crystallographic [001] axis are grown by the hydrothermal method on glass substrates. The ZnO NRs exhibit a broadband (1–2 µm) near-IR absorption ascribed to the singly charged zinc vacancy VZn−1. The saturable absorption of the ZnO NRs is studied at ≈1 µm under picosecond excitation, revealing a low saturation intensity, ≈10 kW/cm2, and high fraction of the saturable losses. The ZnO NRs are applied as saturable absorbers in diode-pumped Yb (≈1.03 µm) and Tm (≈1.94 µm) lasers generating nanosecond pulses. The ZnO NRs grown on various optical surfaces are promising broadband saturable absorbers for nanosecond near-IR lasers in bulk and waveguide geometries.

2010, Rivera, C., Pereiro, J., Navarro, A., Muñoz, E., Brandt, O., Grahn, H.T.

Group-III nitrides are considered to be a strategic technology for the development of ultraviolet photodetectors due to their remarkable properties in terms of spectral selectivity, radiation hardness, and noise. The potential advantages of these materials were initially obscured by their large density of intrinsic defects. The advances were thus associated in general with improvements in material quality. Although technology still also needs improvement, efforts are being intensified in the fabrication of advanced structures for photodetector applications. In particular, this review discusses the recent progress in group-III-nitride photodetectors, emphasizing the work reported on quantum-well-based photodetectors, the use of novel structures exploiting the effect of piezoelectric polarization-induced fields, and polarization-sensitive photodetectors. Furthermore, some ideas can be generalized to other material systems such as ZnO and their related compounds, which exhibit the same crystal structure as group-III nitrides. © Rivera et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.