Vertically Illuminated TW-UTC Photodiodes for Terahertz Generation

More efficient and powerful continuous-wave photonic mixers as terahertz sources are motivated by the need of more versatile local oscillators for submillimeter/terahertz receiver systems. Uni-Travelling Carrier (UTC) photodiodes are very prospective candidates for reaching this objective, but so far only have been reported as lumped-elements or as edge-illuminated optical-waveguide travelling-wave (TW) devices. To overcome the associated power limitations of those implementations, we are developing a novel implementation of the UTC photodiodes which combines a traveling-wave photomixer with vertical velocity-matched illumination in a distributed structure. In this implementation called velocity-matched travelling-wave uni-travelling carrier photodiode, it is possible to obtain in-situ velocity matching of the beat-fringes of the two angled laser beams with the submm/THz-wave on the stripline. In this way, minimum frequency roll-off is achieved by tuning the angle between the two laser beams. A first design of these TW-UTC PDs from our Terahertz Photonics Laboratory at University of Chile has been micro-fabricated at the MC2 cleanroom facility at Chalmers Technical University.