High Current Responsivity and Wide Modulation Bandwidth Terahertz Detector Using High-Electron-Mobility Transistor for Wireless Communication

A high-current-responsivity terahertz (THz) detector was fabricated using a broadband bow-tie antenna and an InAlAs/InGaAs high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) with a short gate length. High-current responsivity can be achieved by using a short gate length; the resulting high transconductance exhibited ballistic transport in the channel. We fabricated the HEMT detector with a 50-nm-long channel; the transconductance was 1.2 S/mm and the subthreshold slope was 120 mV/dec, yielding a high-current responsivity (∼5 A/W) and a cutoff frequency of 460 GHz. We also measured the modulation bandwidth of the THz detector using a heterodyne mixing technique with a uni-traveling carrier photodiode (UTC-PD) for providing the radio frequency (RF) and a frequency multiplier as a local oscillator. The intensity of the intermediate signal (IF) was measured by changing the frequency of the UTC-PD; very high bandwidths of up to 26 GHz were obtained. The experimental results agree well with electromagnetic simulations, which indicate that the bandwidth is determined by the external circuit. The conversion gain from RF to IF was −2 dB in the heterodyne mixing by using the HEMT detector.