On-chip picosecond pulse detection and generation using graphene photoconductive switches.

Hunter, Nicholas; Mayorov, Alexander S; Wood, Christopher D; Russell, Christopher; Li, Lianhe; Linfield, Edmund H; Davies, A Giles; Cunningham, John E · Nano Lett · 2015

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report on the use of graphene for room temperature on-chip detection and generation of pulsed terahertz (THz) frequency radiation, exploiting the fast carrier dynamics of light-generated hot carriers, and compare our results with conventional low-temperature-grown gallium arsenide (LT-GaAs) photoconductive (PC) switches. Coupling of picosecond-duration pulses from a biased graphene PC switch into Goubau line waveguides is also demonstrated. A Drude transport model based on the transient photoconductance of graphene is used to describe the mechanism for both detection and generation of THz radiation.