Abstract. The recent advances in emission and detection of terahertz radiation using two-dimensional (2-D) plasmons in semiconductor nanoheterostructures for nondestructive evaluations are reviewed. The 2-D plasmon resonance is introduced as the operation principle for broadband emission and detection of terahertz radiation. The device structure is based on a high-electron-mobility transistor and incorporates the authors' original asymmetrically interdigitated dual-grating gates.
IntroductionIn the research of modern terahertz (THz) electronics, development of compact, tunable, and coherent sources operating at THz frequencies is one of the hottest issues.1 Two-dimensional (2-D) plasmons in submicron transistors have attracted much attention due to their nature of promoting emission and detection of electromagnetic radiation in the THz range. The channel of a transistor can act as a resonator for plasma waves, the charge-density waves of collectively excited 2-D electrons. The plasma frequency depends on the resonator dimensions and the density of 2-D electrons. It can reach the sub-THz or even THz range for gate lengths of a micron and submicron (nanometer) size. Therefore, different devices/structures of micron and submicron sizes supporting low-dimensional plasmons were intensively studied as possible candidates for solid-state far-infrared (FIR)/THz sources 2-18 and detectors. [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Mechanisms of plasma wave excitation/emission can be divided (by convention) into two types: (1) incoherent and (2) coherent. The first is related to thermal excitation of broadband nonresonant plasmons by hot electrons.2-7 The second is related to the plasma wave instability mechanisms like Dyakonov-Shur (DS) Doppler-shift model 8 and/or Ryzhii-Satou-Shur (RSS) transit-time model, 17,18 where coherent plasmons can be excited either by hot electrons or by optical phonon emission under near ballistic electron motion. 31 On the other hand, hydrodynamic nonlinearities of 2-D plasmons in highelectron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are promising for fast and sensitive rectification/detection of THz radiation.