Abstract-Plasmon-Enhanced below Bandgap Photoconductive Terahertz Generation and Detection

Afshin Jooshesh, Vahid Bahrami-Yekta, Jinye Zhang, Thomas Tiedje, Thomas E. Darcie, andReuven Gordon*

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2, Canada

Nano Lett., Article ASAP

DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b03922

Publication Date (Web): November 17, 2015

Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

*E-mail: rgordon@uvic.ca.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b03922

We use plasmon enhancement to achieve terahertz (THz) photoconductive switches that combine the benefits of low-temperature grown GaAs with mature 1.5 μm femtosecond lasers operating below the bandgap. These below bandgap plasmon-enhanced photoconductive receivers and sources significantly outperform commercial devices based on InGaAs, both in terms of bandwidth and power, even though they operate well below saturation. This paves the way for high-performance low-cost portable systems to enable emerging THz applications in spectroscopy, security, medical imaging, and communication.