Topological nodal-line semimetals attract growing research attention in the photonic and optoelectronic fields due to their unique topological energy-level bands and fascinating nonlinear optical responses. Here, to the best of our knowledge, we first report the saturable absorption property of topological nodal-line semimetal HfGeTe and the related pulse modulation in passively Q-switched visible lasers. Few-layer HfGeTe demonstrates outstanding saturable absorption properties in the visible-light band, yielding the saturation intensities of 7.88, 12.66, and 6.64 µJ/cm² at 515, 640, and 720 nm, respectively. Based on an as-prepared few-layer HfGeTe optical switch and a Pr:LiYF₄ gain medium, Q-switched visible lasers are also successfully achieved at 522, 640, and 720 nm. The minimum pulse widths of the green, red, and deep-red pulsed lasers are 150, 125.5, and 420 ns, respectively. Especially for the green and red pulsed laser, the obtained pulse width is smaller than those of the low-dimensional layered materials. Our work sheds light on the application potential of topological nodal-line semimetals in the generation of visible pulsed lasers.

Praseodymium-ion-doped gain materials have the superiority of lasing at various visible wavelengths directly. Simple and compact visible lasers are booming with the development of blue laser diodes in recent years. In this Letter, we demonstrate the watt-level red laser with a single blue laser diode and Pr:YLiF₄ crystal. On this basis, the passively Q-switched pulse lasers are obtained with monolayer graphene and Co:ZnO thin film as the Q-switchers in the visible range.