Abstract-Terahertz photodetectors based on tapered semiconductor nanowires

L. Romeo¹, D. Coquillat², E. Husanu¹, D. Ercolani¹, A. Tredicucci³, F. Beltram¹, L. Sorba¹, W. Knap² and M. S. Vitiello^1,a)
 HIDE AFFILIATIONS
1 NEST, Scuola Normale Superiore and CNR—Istituto Nanoscienze, Piazza San Silvestro 12, I-56127 Pisa, Italy
2 Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, UMR 5221 CNRS-Universite' Montpellier 2, 34095 Montpellier, France
3 Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Largo Pontecorvo 3 and NEST, CNR - Istituto Nanoscienze, 56127 Pisa, Italy
a) miriam.vitiello@sns.it
Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 231112 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4903473

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/105/23/10.1063/1.4903473?showFTTab=true&containerItemId=content/aip/journal/apl

We report on the demonstration of Terahertz (THz) broadband detectors based on field effect transistors exploiting tapered semiconductor nanowires. The intrinsic asymmetry provided by the nanowires geometry allows to achieve responsivity values as high as 55 V/W (2.5 mA/W) and a noise-equivalent-power of 3 × 10⁻¹⁰ W/Hz^1/2 independent of the specific gate voltage applied. The possibility to reduce the number of terminals required to the source and drain contacts only and the technological feasibility of multi-pixel arrays are promising for the realization of compact and integrated THz matrix array detection systems.