Abstract-Photo-induced terahertz near-field dynamics of graphene/InAs heterostructures

Ziheng Yao, Vyacheslav Semenenko, Jiawei Zhang, Scott Mills, Xiaoguang Zhao, Xinzhong Chen, Hai Hu, Ryan Mescall, Thomas Ciavatti, Stephen March, Seth R. Bank, Tiger H. Tao, Xin Zhang, Vasili Perebeinos, Qing Dai, Xu Du, and Mengkun Liu

Fig. 1 Schematic of the near field optical-pump THz-probe (n-OPTP) setup, equally capable of performing optical pump near-field THz emission (n-OPTE) experiments. ①: 800 nm, 300 mW pump pulses pass through the ITO then go through the center of, while parallel to, the THz beam ②. Optical pump ① and THz probe ② are focused onto the AFM tip apex using an off-axis parabolic mirror. ③: THz gate (detection) beam. Tip scattered THz signals can be mapped out in the time domain by modifying the arrival time of THz gate beam ③ to the THz photoconductive antenna detector, thus changing the delay between ② and ③ (t1). Changing the delay between ① and ③ (t2) by modifying arrival time of pump pulse ① probes the photo-excited ultrafast dynamics of the sample (see main text), where in this work, t1 is fixed at the peak position of the scattered THz electric field while t2 is varied to yield n-OPTE (with THz probe ② blocked) and n-OPTP (with THz probe ② unblocked) measurements.

https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-27-10-13611

In this letter, we report optical pump terahertz (THz) near-field probe (n-OPTP) and optical pump THz near-field emission (n-OPTE) experiments of graphene/InAs heterostructures. Near-field imaging contrasts between graphene and InAs using these newly developed techniques as well as spectrally integrated THz nano-imaging (THz s-SNOM) are systematically studied. We demonstrate that in the near-field regime (𝜆/6000$\lambda /6000$), a single layer of graphene is transparent to near-IR (800 nm) optical excitation and completely “screens” the photo-induced far-infrared (THz) dynamics in its substrate (InAs). Our work reveals unique frequency-selective ultrafast dynamics probed at the near field. It also provides strong evidence that n-OPTE nanoscopy yields contrast that distinguishes single-layer graphene from its substrate.

© 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Abstract-Enhancing THz generation in photomixers using a metamaterial approach

Daniel J. Ironside, Rodolfo Salas, Pai-Yen Chen, Khai Q. Le, Andrea Alú, and Seth R. Bank

Fig. 1 As illustration depicting key photomixer design features between (a) the conventional photomixer design and (b) the proposed enhanced metamaterial design.

https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-27-7-9481

Photomixers at THz frequencies offer an attractive solution to fill the THz gap; however, conventional photomixer designs result in low output powers, on the order of microwatts, before thermal failure. We propose an alternative photomixer design capable of orders of magnitude enhancement of continuous-wave THz generation using a metamaterial approach. By forming a metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) cavity through layering an ultrafast semiconductor material between subwavelength metal-dielectric gratings, tailored resonance can achieve ultrathin absorbing regions and efficient heat sinking. When mounted to a tunable E-patch antenna, gratings also act as vertically biased electrodes, further enhancing photoconductive gain by reducing the carrier path length to nanoscales. Thus, through these multiplicative enhancements, the metamaterial-enhanced photomixer is projected to generate THz powers in the milliwatt range and exceed the Manley-Rowe limit for frequencies less than 2 THz.

© 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Abstract-Tunable Graphene Metasurfaces with Gradient Features by Self-Assembly-Based Moiré Nanosphere Lithography

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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adom.201600242/full

Patterned arrays of graphene nanostructures, also referred as graphene metasurfaces, have proven to be capable of efficiently coupling with incident light by surface plasmon resonances. In this work, a new type of graphene metasurfaces with moiré patterns using cost-effective and scalable moiré nanosphere lithography (MNSL) is demonstrated. A large gradient in feature size (i.e., from sub-200 nm to 1.1 μm) of the graphene nanostructures exists in single metasurfaces. The in-plane quasi-periodic arrangement of the graphene nanostructures can be easily tuned to form a variety of moiré patterns. The experimental measurement and numerical simulations show that the graphene moiré metasurfaces support tunable and multiband optical responses due the size and shape dependences of surface plasmon resonance modes of graphene nanostructures. It is also demonstrated that the multiband optical responses of graphene moiré metasurfaces can be tuned from mid-infrared (MIR) to terahertz (THz) regimes by choosing polystyrene spheres of different sizes for MNSL. These findings provide a cost-effective and scalable strategy to achieve ultrathin functional devices, including multiband light modulators, broadband biosensors, and multiband photodetectors, which feature tunable and multiband responses in wide range of wavelengths from MIR to THz.