Experimental and theoretical investigations of the influence of substrate thickness on the performance of Si field effect transistor terahertz detectors are presented.. We show that in the case of planar metal antennas a significant portion of incoming radiation, instead of being coupled to the transistors, may be coupled to the substrate leading to important responsivity losses..The ways of avoiding these losses are discussed.

We report on the photoresponse of AlGaN/GaN HEMT to THz radiation of low and high intensity. We show that the response vs. gate bias dependence can be described by the theory of Dyakonov-Shur in the whole range of radiation intensity. Unusual behavior of the photoresponse vs. intensity was observed under laser irradiation: a quadratic increase of the response followed by saturation. We speculate that this phenomenon can be explained by hot electrons capture by traps in AlGaN or buffer layers.

We present results of investigations of Plasma Assisted Molecular Beam Epitaxy (PAMBE) - grown GaN/AIGaN High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) structures for fabrication of detectors and emitters operating in THz spectral range. These devices are standard HEMT structures but equipped with additional antennas that ensure THz radiation coupling. THz detectors and emitters were processed using different HEMT designs. The results of emission experiments at room temperature demonstrate emission in the spectral range from 0.5 to 12 THz with a total integrated power of the single transistor of the order of 100 nW. The results of room temperature THz detection (photoresponse experiments) in the ranges 110-170 and 220-330 GHz are presented and discussed. THz experiments, transistor electrical tests and data analysis presented in this work, clearly show that PAMBE grown GaN/AIGaN transistors can used as promising elements of future THz imaging systems.

An overview of main results concerning THz detection related to plasma nonlinearities in nanometer field effect transistors is presented. In particular nonlinearity and dynamic range of these detectors are discussed. As a conclusion, we will show one of the first real world application of the FET THz detectors: a demonstrator of the imager developed for fast postal security.

We have found the possibility to probe the magnetic field-driven topological phase transition in HgTe-based transistors by measuring their Terahertz photoconductivity response. At the critical magnetic field to which zero-mode Landau levels cross, we have observed a pronounced photoconductivity peak independent on incident frequency and carrier concentration. Our results pave the way towards terahertz topological field effect transistors.

The magnetoabsorption spectra in double HgTe/CdHgTe quantum wells (QWs) with normal and inverted band structures are investigated. The Landau levels in symmetric QWs with a rectangular potential profile are calculated based on the Kane 8 × 8 model. The presence of a tunnel-transparent barrier is shown to lead to the splitting of states and “doubling” of the main magnetoabsorption lines. At a QW width close to the critical one the presence of band inversion and the emergence of a gapless band structure, similar to bilayer graphene, are shown for a structure with a single QW. The shift of magnetoabsorption lines as the carrier concentration changes due to the persistent photoconductivity effect associated with a change in the potential profile because of trap charge exchange is detected. This opens up the possibility for controlling topological phase transitions in such structures.

We present the concept, the fabrication processes and the experimental results for materials and optics that can be used for terahertz field-effect transistor detector focal plane arrays. More specifically, we propose 3D printed arrays of a new type - diffractive multi-zone lenses of which the performance is superior to that of previously used mono-zone diffractive or refractive elements and evaluate them with GaN/AlGaN field-effect transistor terahertz detectors. Experiments performed in the 300-GHz atmospheric window show that the lens arrays offer both a good efficiency and good uniformity, and may improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the terahertz field-effect transistor detectors by more than one order of magnitude. In practice, we tested 3 × 12 lens linear arrays with printed circuit board THz detector arrays used in postal security scanners and observed significant signal-to-noise improvements. Our results clearly show that the proposed technology provides a way to produce cost-effective, reproducible, flat optics for large-size field-effect transistor THz-detector focal plane arrays.