Plasmonic nanostructures for increasing the efficiency of terahertz large-area photomixers

Abstract

Enhancement of the optical power transmission to photoconductor-based large-area photomixers is investigated and numerically analyzed in this work. It is shown that a nanoscale periodic structure as the interdigitated electrodes can increase the power transmission to the active layer of terahertz (THz) photomixers by a factor of 4. This increase of the optical power transmission, which is facilitated by proper designing of the plasmonic structure formed by metallic interdigitated electrodes, increases the conversion efficiency of THz photomixers.