Terahertz pulsed photogenerated current in microdiodes at room temperature
- School of Science and Engineering, Reykjavik University, Menntavegur 1, IS-101 Reykjavik (Iceland)
Space-charge modulation of the current in a vacuum diode under photoemission leads to the formation of beamlets with time periodicity corresponding to THz frequencies. We investigate the effect of the emitter temperature and internal space-charge forces on the formation and persistence of the beamlets. We find that temperature effects are most important for beam degradation at low values of the applied electric field, whereas at higher fields, intra-beamlet space-charge forces are dominant. The current modulation is most robust when there is only one beamlet present in the diode gap at a time, corresponding to a macroscopic version of the Coulomb blockade. It is shown that a vacuum microdiode can operate quite well as a tunable THz oscillator at room temperature with an applied electric field above 10 MV/m and a diode gap of the order of 100 nm.
- OSTI ID:
- 22486106
- Journal Information:
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 20; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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