The broadband terahertz （THz） emission from drifting two-dimensional electron gas （2DEG） in an AI- GaN/GaN heterostructure at 6 K is reported. The devices are designed as THz plasmon emitters according to the Smith-Purcell effect and the ＇shallow water＇ plasma instability mechanism in 2DEG. Plasmon excitation is excluded since no signature of electron-density dependent plasmon mode is observed. Instead, the observed THz emission is found to come from the heated lattice and/or the hot electrons. Simulated emission spectra of hot electrons taking into account the THz absorption in air and Fabry-Pérot interference agree well with the experiment. It is confirmed that a blackbody-like THz emission will inevitably be encountered in similar devices driven by a strong in-plane electric field. A conclusion is drawn that a more elaborate device design is required to achieve efficient plasmon excitation and THz emission.
An optimized micro-gated terahertz detector with novel triple resonant antenna is presented.The novel resonant antenna operates at room temperature and shows more than a 700% increase in photocurrent response compared to the conventional bowtie antenna.In finite-difference-time-domain simulations,we found the performance of the self-mixing GaN/AlGaN high electron mobility transistor detector is mainly dependent on the parameters L gs（the gap between the gate and the source/drain antenna） and L w（the gap between the source and drain antenna）.With the improved triple resonant antenna,an optimized micrometer-sized AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor detector can achieve a high responsivity of 9.45×102 V/W at a frequency of 903 GHz at room temperature.
In a grating-coupled high-electron-mobility transistor, weak terahertz emission with wavelength around 400um was observed by using a Fourier-transform spectrometer. The absolute terahertz emission power was extracted from a strong background blackbody emission by using a modulation technique. The power of terahertz emission is proportional to the drain-source current, while the power of blackbody emission has a distinct relation with the electrical power. The dependence on the drain-source bias and the gate voltage suggests that the terahertz emission is induced by accelerated electrons interacting with the grating.
