A hetero-barrier rectifier, Fermi-level managed barrier (FMB) diode, was developed for broadband and low-noise THzwave detection. The FMB diode has a very low barrier height of 100 meV or less, which is essential for attaining low noise-equivalent power detection under a zero-biased condition. The fabricated module integrating a high-gain preamplifier could detect signals in a wide frequency range from 160 GHz to 1.4 THz with a very low noise equivalent power (NEP) of 3 × 10^-12 W√Hz at 300 GHz in the square-law detection mode. For the heterodyne detection, an FMB diode module integrating a broadband trans-impedance amplifier was fabricated, exhibiting an intermediate frequency bandwidth of 11 GHz. Using this module, an extremely low NEP of 1.1 × 10^-18 W/Hz was achieved with a very low local oscillator power of 6 × 10^-6 W at around 300 GHz.

Date Published: 9 September 2019
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 11088, Optical Sensing, Imaging, and Photon Counting: From X-Rays to THz 2019, 1108807 (9 September 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2528250

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11088:
Optical Sensing, Imaging, and Photon Counting: From X-Rays to THz 2019
Oleg Mitrofanov, Editor(s)