Cargando…
Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane
Semiconductor photoconductive switches are useful and versatile emitters of terahertz (THz) radiation with a broad range of applications in THz imaging and time-domain spectroscopy. One fundamental challenge for achieving efficient ultrafast switching, however, is the relatively long carrier lifetim...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9613981/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302852 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34170-3 |
_version_ | 1784820092180103168 |
---|---|
author | Zhang, Dehui Xu, Zhen Cheng, Gong Liu, Zhe Gutierrez, Audrey Rose Zang, Wenzhe Norris, Theodore B. Zhong, Zhaohui |
author_facet | Zhang, Dehui Xu, Zhen Cheng, Gong Liu, Zhe Gutierrez, Audrey Rose Zang, Wenzhe Norris, Theodore B. Zhong, Zhaohui |
author_sort | Zhang, Dehui |
collection | PubMed |
description | Semiconductor photoconductive switches are useful and versatile emitters of terahertz (THz) radiation with a broad range of applications in THz imaging and time-domain spectroscopy. One fundamental challenge for achieving efficient ultrafast switching, however, is the relatively long carrier lifetime in most common semiconductors. To obtain picosecond ultrafast pulses, especially when coupled with waveguides/transmission lines, semiconductors are typically engineered with high defect density to reduce the carrier lifetimes, which in turn lowers the overall power output of the photoconductive switches. To overcome this fundamental trade-off, here we present a new hybrid photoconductive switch design by engineering a hot-carrier fast lane using graphene on silicon. While photoexcited carriers are generated in the silicon layer, similar to a conventional switch, the hot carriers are transferred to the graphene layer for efficient collection at the contacts. As a result, the graphene-silicon hybrid photoconductive switch emits THz fields with up to 80 times amplitude enhancement compared to its graphene-free counterpart. These results both further the understanding of ultrafast hot carrier transport in such hybrid systems and lay the groundwork toward intrinsically more powerful THz devices based on 2D-3D hybrid heterostructures. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9613981 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96139812022-10-29 Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane Zhang, Dehui Xu, Zhen Cheng, Gong Liu, Zhe Gutierrez, Audrey Rose Zang, Wenzhe Norris, Theodore B. Zhong, Zhaohui Nat Commun Article Semiconductor photoconductive switches are useful and versatile emitters of terahertz (THz) radiation with a broad range of applications in THz imaging and time-domain spectroscopy. One fundamental challenge for achieving efficient ultrafast switching, however, is the relatively long carrier lifetime in most common semiconductors. To obtain picosecond ultrafast pulses, especially when coupled with waveguides/transmission lines, semiconductors are typically engineered with high defect density to reduce the carrier lifetimes, which in turn lowers the overall power output of the photoconductive switches. To overcome this fundamental trade-off, here we present a new hybrid photoconductive switch design by engineering a hot-carrier fast lane using graphene on silicon. While photoexcited carriers are generated in the silicon layer, similar to a conventional switch, the hot carriers are transferred to the graphene layer for efficient collection at the contacts. As a result, the graphene-silicon hybrid photoconductive switch emits THz fields with up to 80 times amplitude enhancement compared to its graphene-free counterpart. These results both further the understanding of ultrafast hot carrier transport in such hybrid systems and lay the groundwork toward intrinsically more powerful THz devices based on 2D-3D hybrid heterostructures. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9613981/ /pubmed/36302852 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34170-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Zhang, Dehui Xu, Zhen Cheng, Gong Liu, Zhe Gutierrez, Audrey Rose Zang, Wenzhe Norris, Theodore B. Zhong, Zhaohui Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
title | Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
title_full | Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
title_fullStr | Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
title_full_unstemmed | Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
title_short | Strongly enhanced THz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
title_sort | strongly enhanced thz generation enabled by a graphene hot-carrier fast lane |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9613981/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302852 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34170-3 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT zhangdehui stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT xuzhen stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT chenggong stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT liuzhe stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT gutierrezaudreyrose stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT zangwenzhe stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT norristheodoreb stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane AT zhongzhaohui stronglyenhancedthzgenerationenabledbyagraphenehotcarrierfastlane |