Reliability Investigation of Photoconductive Continuous-Wave Terahertz Emitters

Author

Göbel, Thorsten ; Schoenherr, Daniel ; Sydlo, Cezary ; Feiginov, Michael ; Meissner, Peter ; Hartnagel, Hans Ludwig

Author_Institution

Photonic Components Dept., Heinrich Hertz Inst., Berlin, Germany

Volume

59

Issue

8

fYear

2011

Firstpage

2001

Lastpage

2007

Abstract

The lifetime of photomixers depends significantly on the operation conditions. High values of bias voltage and/or optical power increase the emitted terahertz power, but considerably decrease the operation lifetime. Interdigitated finger photomixers especially face the problem of thermal destruction due to high current densities. We present an Arrhenius analysis of low-temperature-grown-GaAs photomixers and link the photomixer lifetime to the accessible signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). With a coherent continuous-wave terahertz system designed for 1000 operating hours, we achieve an SNR of 30 dB at 1 THz using an integration time of 500 ms.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; current density; gallium arsenide; integrated optics; microwave photonics; optical design techniques; photoconducting devices; semiconductor device reliability; terahertz wave devices; terahertz wave generation; Arrhenius analysis; GaAs; coherent continuous-wave terahertz system; current densities; device reliability; frequency 1 THz; low-temperature-grown photomixers; operation lifetime; photoconductive continuous-wave terahertz emitters; photomixer lifetime; signal-to-noise ratio; terahertz power; thermal destruction; time 1000 h; Adaptive optics; Dark current; Gallium arsenide; Heating; Optical saturation; Temperature measurement; Thermal resistance; Photomixing; reliability; terahertz;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9480

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMTT.2011.2153868

Filename

5783955