Nonlinear optical fibres have been employed for a vast number of applications, including optical frequency conversion, ultrafast laser and optical communication^1,2,3,4. In current manufacturing technologies, nonlinearity is realized by the injection of nonlinear materials into fibres^5,6,7 or the fabrication of microstructured fibres^8,9,10. Both strategies, however, suffer from either low optical nonlinearity or poor design flexibility. Here, we report the direct growth of MoS₂, a highly nonlinear two-dimensional material¹¹, onto the internal walls of a SiO₂ optical fibre. This growth is realized via a two-step chemical vapour deposition method, where a solid precursor is pre-deposited to guarantee a homogeneous feedstock before achieving uniform two-dimensional material growth along the entire fibre walls. By using the as-fabricated 25-cm-long fibre, both second- and third-harmonic generation could be enhanced by ~300 times compared with monolayer MoS₂/silica. Propagation losses remain at ~0.1 dB cm^–1 for a wide frequency range. In addition, we demonstrate an all-fibre mode-locked laser (~6 mW output, ~500 fs pulse width and ~41 MHz repetition rate) by integrating the two-dimensional-material-embedded optical fibre as a saturable absorber. Initial tests show that our fabrication strategy is amenable to other transition metal dichalcogenides, making these embedded fibres versatile for several all-fibre nonlinear optics and optoelectronics applications.

非线性光纤已被广泛应用，包括光频率转换，超快激光和光通信^1,2,3,4。在当前的制造技术中，通过将非线性材料注入纤维^5、6、7或制造微结构化纤维^8、9、10来实现非线性。但是，这两种策略都存在光学非线性低或设计灵活性差的问题。在这里，我们报告了高度非线性的二维材料¹¹ MoS ₂在SiO ₂内壁上的直接生长光纤。这种生长是通过两步化学气相沉积方法实现的，在该方法中，在沿整个纤维壁实现均匀的二维材料生长之前，预先沉积了固体前体以确保均匀的原料。通过使用制成的25厘米长的纤维，与单层MoS ₂ /二氧化硅相比，第二谐波和第三谐波的产生都可以提高约300倍。传播损耗保持在〜0.1 dB cm ^–1适用于较宽的频率范围。此外，我们通过将嵌入二维材料的光纤集成为可饱和吸收体，展示了全光纤锁模激光器（输出功率约6 mW，脉冲宽度约500 fs，重复频率约41 MHz）。初步测试表明，我们的制造策略适用于其他过渡金属二硫属化物，使这些嵌入式光纤可用于多种全光纤非线性光学和光电应用。