# Boosting the Terahertz Photoconductive Antenna Performance with Optimized Plasmonic Nanostructures

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a hybrid terahertz photoconductive antenna with optimized plasmonic nanostructures that doubles efficiency and operates effectively at challenging frequencies, using a cost-effective fabrication method.

## Contribution

It introduces a numerically optimized hybrid THz antenna with silver nanoantennas, achieving significant efficiency enhancement and practical fabrication approach.

## Key findings

- 2-fold increase in optical-to-THz conversion efficiency
- Strongest enhancement around 1 THz frequency
- Cost-effective fabrication via thermal dewetting

## Abstract

Advanced nanophotonics penetrates into other areas of science and technology, ranging from applied physics to biology and resulting in many fascinating cross-disciplinary applications. It has been recently demonstrated that suitably engineered light-matter interactions at the nanoscale can overcome the limitations of today's terahertz (THz) photoconductive antennas, making them one step closer to many practical implications. Here we push forward this concept by comprehensive numerical optimization and experimental investigation of a log-periodic THz photoconductive antenna coupled to a silver nanoantenna array. We shed light on the operation principles of the resulting hybrid THz antenna, providing an approach to boost its performance. By tailoring the size of silver nanoantennas and the distance between them, we obtain an enhancement of optical-to-THz conversion efficiency 2-fold larger compared with previously reported results, and the strongest enhancement is around 1 THz, a frequency range barely achievable by other compact THz sources. Moreover, we propose a cost-effective fabrication procedure to realize such hybrid THz antennas with optimized plasmonic nanostructures via thermal dewetting process, which does not require any post processing and makes the proposed solution very attractive for applications.