Employing metamaterials for enhanced THz generation in photomixers

We propose an alternative THz photomixer design capable of orders of magnitude enhancement for continuous-wave THz generation. Utilizing suitably tailored arrays of plasmonic nanoscatterers, near-perfect optical absorption can be achieved in photoconductive active regions as thin as 50 nm. This would enable significant, ~100x, increase in output power with the addition of a high thermal conductive copper substrate as the ground plane along with an E-patch antenna for efficient radiation. Our analysis indicates that such a THz photomixer design may generate continuous wave powers in the milliwatt range and, through photoconductive gain, exceed the Manley-Rowe limit up to 2 THz.