Design of a Photoconductive Antenna for High Power Terahertz Generation

A photoconductive antenna (PCA) based on plasmonic contact electrode gratings for high power terahertz generation is proposed and experimentally verified in this paper. The designed nano-scale gratings allow for the excitation of surface plasmon waves, which greatly improves the intensity of the optical pump near the electrodes. Thus, the terahertz output power is increased. The proposed antenna is simulated and analyzed in high frequency structure simulator (HFSS). Terahertz time domain spectroscopy setup was used to characterize the proposed antenna. The measured result shows that compared with the conventional PCA, the proposed PCA based on plasmonic contact electrodes can offer 10.5 times growth of terahertz radiation power over 0.1-2 THz.