Emission and detection of terahertz radiation using two-dimensional plasmons in semiconductor nanoheterostructures for nondestructive evaluations

Taiichi Otsuji,Stephane Albon Boubanga Tombet,Akira Satou,Takayuki Watanabe,Vyacheslav Popov,Victor Ryzhii,Wojciech Knap

doi:10.1117/1.oe.53.3.031206

Taiichi Otsuji, Stephane Albon Boubanga Tombet + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1117/1.oe.53.3.031206

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Abstract

The recent advances in emission and detection of terahertz radiation using two-dimensional (2-D) plasmons in semiconductor nanoheterostructures for nondestructive evaluations are reviewed. The 2-D plasmon resonance is introduced as the operation principle for broadband emission and detection of terahertz radiation. The device structure is based on a high-electron-mobility transistor and incorporates the authors’ original asymmetrically interdigitated dual-grating gates. Excellent THz emission and detection performances are experimentally demonstrated by using InAlAs/InGaAs/InP and/or InGaP/InGaAs/GaAs heterostructure material systems. Their applications to nondestructive material evaluation based on THz imaging are also presented.

Highlights

In the research of modern terahertz (THz) electronics, development of compact, tunable, and coherent sources operating at THz frequencies is one of the hottest issues.[1]
We have proposed our original dual-grating gates (DGGs)-highelectron-mobility transistors (HEMTs)-type 2-D plasmon-resonant microchip emitter as a new THz light source.[32,33,34,39]
It is reasonable to suggest that a similar enhancement should be exhibited for the plasmon instability in the asymmetric DGG (A-DGG) HEMT

Summary

Introduction

In the research of modern terahertz (THz) electronics, development of compact, tunable, and coherent sources operating at THz frequencies is one of the hottest issues.[1]. The first is related to thermal excitation of broadband nonresonant plasmons by hot electrons.[2,3,4,5,6,7] The second is related to the plasma wave instability mechanisms like Dyakonov–Shur (DS) Doppler-shift model[8] and/or Ryzhii-Satou-Shur (RSS) transit-time model,[17,18] where coherent plasmons can be excited either by hot electrons or by optical phonon emission under near ballistic electron motion.[31] On the other hand, hydrodynamic nonlinearities of 2-D plasmons in highelectron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are promising for fast and sensitive rectification/detection of THz radiation.[19] When an incoming THz radiation excites the plasma waves, the local carrier density as well as the local carrier drift velocity is modulated by the radiation frequency. Plasma wave properties were successfully used for the resonant and nonresonant (broadband) sub-THz and THz detection.[20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30] They can be applied to real-time THz imaging/spectroscopic analysis as well as future THz wireless communications.[1]

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Discussion

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