Efficient optical-to-terahertz conversion in large-area InGaAs photo-Dember emitters with increased indium content

Abstract

Optical-to-terahertz (THz) conversion of 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses in large-area bias-free InGaAs emitters based on photo-Dember (PD) and lateral photo-Dember (LPD) effects is experimentally investigated. We use metamorphic buffers to grow submicro-meter thick InxGa1-xAs layers with indium mole fractions x=0.37, 0.53, and 0.70 on a GaAs substrate. A strong enhancement of THz output energy with an increase of indium content is observed. On the surface of the sample providing the strongest emission (x=0.7), we have fabricated a 1.5 cm2 area of asymmetri-cally shaped metallic grating for LPD emission. This LPD emitter allows achieving high conversion efficiency of 0.24 . 10-3 and a broad generation band-width of up to 6 THz. We also demon-strate that there is no significant differ-rence in the conversion efficiency when operating at 1 and 200 kHz repetition rates. Our results show that large area LPD emitters give a convenient, competitive way to generate intense high-repetition-rate THz pulses.