Mitigating Electrode-Induced Polarization Artifacts in Miniaturized Terahertz Detectors via a Ring-Shaped Electrode Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a ring-shaped electrode design for miniaturized terahertz detectors that significantly reduces polarization artifacts and field distortions, improving the fidelity of polarization measurements across a broad frequency range.

Contribution

The study presents a novel ring-shaped electrode architecture that suppresses field perturbations and polarization artifacts in THz detectors, enabling more accurate and compact polarization-sensitive measurements.

Findings

8.48x reduction in local field strength compared to rod electrodes

6.95x decrease in photocurrent with ring electrode

Reduced polarization ratio from >3 to <1.4

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) polarization detection provides critical insights into material properties but faces a fundamental constraint upon miniaturization: subwavelength metallic electrodes induce strong localization and distortion of the incident field, thereby convoluting the intrinsic device response with electrode-induced artifacts. Here, we overcome this limitation with a ring-shaped electrode architecture that suppresses field perturbations across a broad bandwidth from 2.0 to 5.0 THz. The resonant frequency of the ring electrode can be flexibly detuned from the target operation frequency by adjusting its inner and outer radii, while the smooth, edge-free geometry minimizes the lightning-rod effect. These design features collectively lead to a pronounced suppression of localized THz field enhancement. Numerical simulations reveal an 8.48x reduction in the local field strength compared with conventional rod-shaped electrodes. Consistent with this, experimental measurements on graphene-based detectors exhibit a 6.95x decrease in photocurrent for the ring-shaped electrode relative to the rod-shaped configuration. Moreover, the ring geometry effectively reduces the linear polarization ratio of the photocurrent from >3 to <1.4, confirming its effectiveness in mitigating electrode-induced polarization anisotropy. Our design decouples the detection response from electrode-induced artifacts, enabling compact THz detectors that preserve intrinsic signal fidelity for high-quality polarization-resolved imaging and diagnostics.