Abstract
High performance terahertz imaging devices have drawn wide attention due to their significant application in healthcare, security of food and medicine, and nondestructive inspection, as well as national security applications. Here we demonstrate a broadband terahertz photon-type up-conversion imaging device, operating around the liquid helium temperature, based on the gallium arsenide homojunction interfacial workfunction internal photoemission (HIWIP)-detector-LED up-converter and silicon CCD. Such an imaging device achieves broadband response in 4.2–20 THz and can absorb the normal incident light. The peak responsivity is 0.5 AW−1. The light emitting diode leads to a 72.5% external quantum efficiency improvement compared with the one widely used in conventional up-conversion devices. A peak up-conversion efficiency of 1.14 × 10−2 is realized and the optimal noise equivalent power is 29.1 pWHz−1/2. The up-conversion imaging for a 1000 K blackbody pin-hole is demonstrated. This work provides a different imaging scheme in the terahertz band.
Highlights
High performance terahertz imaging devices have drawn wide attention due to their significant application in healthcare, security of food and medicine, and nondestructive inspection, as well as national security applications
It is composed of a p-type Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) homojunction interfacial workfunction internal photoemission (HIWIP) detector and a specially designed light emitting diodes (LED) for low temperature, i.e. GaAs/AlGaAs double heterojunction LED inserted with InGaAs quantum well (AlGaAs/GaAs/InGaAs LED)
Just like most of the other semiconductor up-conversion device, the HIWIP-LED device is a two terminal device, which means that we cannot adjust the bias voltage applied to the HIWIP part and the LED part separately[29]
Summary
High performance terahertz imaging devices have drawn wide attention due to their significant application in healthcare, security of food and medicine, and nondestructive inspection, as well as national security applications. We demonstrate a broadband terahertz photon-type up-conversion imaging device, operating around the liquid helium temperature, based on the gallium arsenide homojunction interfacial workfunction internal photoemission (HIWIP)-detector-LED up-converter and silicon CCD. Such an imaging device achieves broadband response in 4.2–20 THz and can absorb the normal incident light. The uncooled operated and low noise equivalent power (NEP) a-Si and VOx micro-bolometer commercial THz imaging cameras were realized by CEA-Leti and INO8. THz cameras is only 25 Hz and 50 Hz from CEA-Leti and INO, respectively[10,11] This rate is enough for real time imaging but far away from the application of high speed detection.
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