Germanium ultrabroadband THz photoconductive antennas

Photoconductive antennas fabricated from III-V semiconductors exhibit a spectral gap around their Reststrahlen region. This can be avoided in nonpolar semiconductors such as Si and Ge, the latter with a relatively small bandgap and high carrier mobility. Using Ge we have demonstrated the generation of a gapless THz spectrum extending up to 13 THz, limited only by the duration of the 65 fs excitation laser pulses. A severe drawback, however, is the long recombination time in the microsecond range owed to the indirect nature of the band gap. Although not essential for broadband THz emission, shorter lifetimes are necessary to ensure complete carrier recombination between subsequent laser pulses and to make these emitters compatible with standard mode-locked laser systems operating at pulse repetition rates up to hundreds of MHz.

To overcome this restriction, we have introduced deep traps into Ge via gold ion implantation. This leads to a reduction of the carrier lifetime to sub-nanosecond values. We demonstrate a photoconductive THz antenna fabricated on this Au-implanted Ge material that can be excited with mode-locked fiber lasers operating at wavelengths of 1.1 and 1.55 um and with pulse repetition rates of tens of MHz. Using extremely short excitation pulses of 11 fs, we observe a THz emission spectrum reaching up to 70 THz bandwidth, which is almost one order of magnitude higher than that of existing state-of–the-art photoconductive THz emitters fabricated on GaAs or InGaAs. We also succeeded to excite the implanted Ge antenna with pulses centered at the telecom wavelength of 1550 nm. The corresponding spectrum turned out to be somewhat weaker and less broadband, which can be related to the fact that the long-wavelength part does not overlap with the direct absorption of Ge, i.e. it is too weakly absorbed through the indirect transition.

We have shown that the group-IV elemental semiconductor Ge can be used as a broadband THz emitter without spectral gap up to 13 THz. Using Au implanted Ge and short enough excitation laser pulses, the spectrum even extends up to 70 THz and excitation can be done with fiber lasers in the telecom range. This points towards the possibility of compact, high-bandwidth THz photonic devices compatible with Si CMOS technology.