Design and performance of a terahertz photoconductive antenna with nano-crossfinger structure

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel nano-crossfinger structure for photoconductive antennas to enhance terahertz radiation power, demonstrating through simulations that it outperforms nano-finger designs.

Contribution

Introduction of a nano-crossfinger structure in PCA design, showing improved THz radiation efficiency over existing nano-finger structures via full-wave simulations.

Findings

Nano-crossfinger PCA radiates higher THz fields than nano-finger PCA.

Enhanced bias field within the nano-structure improves THz emission.

Simulation results confirm superior performance of the proposed design.

Abstract

Improving terahertz(THz) radiation power and/or optics-to-THz efficiency of the photoconductive antenna(PCA) is widely recognized as one of the most attractive and challenging missions in THz community. In this work, the design of a THz PCA with nano-crossfinger structure in the active region is proposed. The THz radiation properties of this PCA was demonstrated by finite-difference-time-domain method based on full-wave model. As a comparison, the PCA with nano-finger structure that promises enhanced THz radiation than conventional PCA was also analyzed numerically. The results indicate that the nano-crossfinger PCA can radiate even higher THz field than the nano-finger PCA, primarily due to the enhanced bias field within the nano-structure.