Organic Semiconductors as High-Speed Photoconductive Terahertz Spatial Light Modulators

In this work, we present the first study on organic semiconductors as a photoconductive terahertz spatial light modulator (THz SLM), to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The characterization includes modulation depth (MD) created by the photocarriers within the material and the measurement of carrier lifetime, relating to the operation speed of the material. We observed 16.50% of MD, and the carrier lifetime was measured to be 4.527 ns. As the carrier lifetime is similar to gallium arsenide (GaAs), we compare both and discover an order of magnitude enhancement in MD. This report shows that organic semiconductors can serve as a promising high-speed THz SLM for real-time terahertz imaging.