We demonstrate a bismuth (Bi) saturable absorber (SA) for generating ultrafast pulse. The Bi SA is fabricated by the Bi film deposited on the surface of microfibers through using magnetron sputtering. Its nonlinear optical properties are investigated. The as-prepared Bi SA has outstanding nonlinear absorption property demonstrated by the open aperture (OA) Z-scan system at 1500 nm and balanced twin-detector method at 1560 nm. The nonlinear optical property of Bi SA shows that the modulation depth, the nonsaturable losses, and the saturable intensity at 1.5 μm are 14% and 79%, and 0.9 MW/cm ², respectively. Besides, the closed aperture (CA) Z-scan measurement is also implemented to estimate the nonlinear refractive index of Bi film. The Bi film shows that the typical CA/OA curve possesses the feature of peak-valley profile, meaning that the sample with a negative nonlinear refractive index is self-defocusing. In our experiments, the parameters of the nonlinear absorption coefficient βand the nonlinear refractive index n ₂are estimated at about 2.38 × 10 ^–4cm/W and –1.47 × 10 ^–9cm ²/W according to the actual experimental data points, respectively. To further investigate its nonlinear optical property, the microfiber-based Bi SA is embedded into an erbium-doped fiber laser with a typical ring cavity structure. Based on the Bi SA device, the stable ultrafast pulses are generated at 1.5 μm with the pulse width of 357 fs, the output power of 45.4 mW, corresponding to the pulse energy of 2.39 nJ, and the signal-to-noise ratio is 84 dB. The stable soliton pulses emitting at 1563 nm are obtained with a 3-dB and 6-nm spectral bandwidth. The experimental results suggest that the microfiber-based Bi SA prepared by magnetron sputtering deposition (MSD) technique can be used as an excellent photonic device for ultrafast pulse generation in the 1.5 μm regime, and the MSD technique opens a promising way to produce high-performance SA with a large modulation depth, low saturable intensity, and high power tolerance, which are conducible to the generation of high power and ultrafast pulse with high stability.