Abstract-Microstructured gradient-index lenses for THz photoconductive antennas

Mads Brincker1, Peter Karlsen2, Esben Skovsen1 and Thomas Søndergaard1,a)
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/adva/6/2/10.1063/1.4942426?TRACK=RSS
1 Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, Aalborg University, Skjernvej 4A, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark
2 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QL, UK
a) Corresponding author: ts@nano.aau.dk
AIP Advances 6, 025015 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4942426

 A new type of substrate lens for photoconductive antennas (PCA’s) based on sub-wavelength microstructuring is presented and studied theoretically by the use of Greens functionintegral equationmethods (GFIEM’s). By etching sub-wavelength trenches into a flat substrate, the effective dielectric constant can be designed to function like a gradient index (GRIN) lens. The proposed GRIN substrate lenses have sub-mm dimension, which is smaller than the dimensions of a typical hyper-hemispherical substrate lens (HSL), and could enable fabrication of arrays of closely packed PCA’s with individual lenses integrated directly into the PCA substrate. The performance of different GRINlenses is compared to a HSL and shown to be comparable with regards to the terahertz radiation extraction efficiency, and it is shown that the collimating properties of these GRINlenses can be tailored by changing the parameters used for microstructuring.