Room Temperature Coherent and Voltage Tunable Terahertz Emission from Nanometer-Sized Field Effect Transistors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates room temperature, voltage-tunable terahertz emission from nanometer-sized InGaAs transistors, driven by plasma waves, with potential for tunable terahertz sources.

Contribution

It provides the first evidence of coherent, voltage-tunable terahertz emission from nanometer-scale transistors at room temperature, elucidating the plasma wave mechanism.

Findings

Room temperature coherent terahertz emission demonstrated.

Emission frequency shifts with channel current.

Plasma wave mechanism confirmed as the source.

Abstract

We report on reflective electro-optic sampling measurements of TeraHertz emission from nanometer-gate-length InGaAs-based high electron mobility transistors. The room temperature coherent gate-voltage tunable emission is demonstrated. We establish that the physical mechanism of the coherent TeraHertz emission is related to the plasma waves driven by simultaneous current and optical excitation. A significant shift of the plasma frequency and the narrowing of the emission with increasing channel's current are observed and explained as due to the increase of the carriers density and drift velocity.