Terahertz radiation in In0.38Ga0.62As grown on a GaAs wafer with a metamorphic buffer layer under femtosecond laser excitation

Abstract

The results of time-domain spectroscopy of the terahertz (THz) generation in a structure with an In0.38Ga0.62As photoconductive layer are presented. This structure grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on a GaAs substrate using a metamorphic buffer layer allows THz generation with a wide frequency spectrum (to 6 THz). This is due to the additional contribution of the photo-Dember effect to THz generation. The measured optical-to-terahertz conversion efficiency in this structure is 10–5 at a rather low optical fluence of ~40 μJ/cm2, which is higher than that in low-temperature grown GaAs by almost two orders of magnitude.