We had proved that a kind of graphene nanomaterial "carboxyl-functionalized graphene oxide (GO-COOH)" possessed nonlinear saturable absorber (SA) property. The modulation depth of a GO-COOH water solution was measured as similar to 8%. Moreover, a GO-COOH-based SA device was made and applied in an erbium-doped fiber laser. In this fiber laser, Q-switching pulses and mode-locked pulses were both obtained. With an increase in the pump power, the pulse width of Q-switching pulses decreased from 9.05 to 2.49 mu s. The mode-locked pulse width was 844 fs, and the corresponding spectral bandwidth was 3.64 nm. Moreover, polarization adjusting or control was not needed during the whole process of mode locking. It illustrated that the proposed fiber laser incorporating GO-COOH could endure bigger intracavity birefringence. Our results indicated that the GO-COOH nanomaterial was a promising SA for generating high-performance pulse lasers. (C) 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)