ThD1-1 (Invited) IPRM2013, May 19 - 23, 2013, Kobe, Japan

The 25th International Conference on Indium Phosphide and Related Materials

8:30 - 9:00

Asymmetric Dual-Grating Gate InGaAs/InAlAs/InP

HEMTs for Ultrafast and Ultrahigh Sensitive
Terahertz Detection
Taiichi Otsuji, Takayuki Watanabe, Stephane Boubanga-Tombet, Tetsuya Suemitsu
Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan
otsuji@riec.tohoku.ac.jp
Dominique Coquillat, Wojciech Knap
LC2 Laboratory. University of Montpellier and CNRS
Montpellier, France
Denis Fateev, Vyacheslav Popov
Kotelnikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics (Saratov Branch), RAS
Saratov, Russia

Abstract—This paper reviews recent advances in ultrafast and
ultrahigh sensitive broadband terahertz detection utilizsing
asymmetric double-grating-gate InP-based high-electron-
mobility transistors, demonstrating a record responsivity of 2.2
kV/W at 1 THz under drain-unbiased conditions with a superior
low noise equivalent power of 15 pW/¥Hz and 6.4 kV/W even at
1.5 THz under drain-biased conditions.
Keywords—terahertz; plasmon; detector; HEMT; grating
I. INTRODUCTION
Hydrodynamic nonlinearities of two-dimensional (2D)
plasmons in high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are
promising for fast and sensitive rectification/detection of
terahertz (THz) radiation [1], which can be applied to real-time
THz sensing and future THz wireless communications [2].
When a terahertz radiation excites the 2D plasmons in a
HEMT, local carrier densities as well as local carrier drift
velocity in the channel are modulated by the THz radiation,
resulting in generation of quadratic plasma-wave current with a
rectified DC component, giving rise to a photovoltaic effect at
the high-impedance drain terminal under a common-source
asymmetric boundary condition. Recently, InP- and GaN-based
HEMTs as well as Si-MOSFETs have demonstrated improved
responsivities [3,4], approaching 1 kV/W at 1 THz by
introducing narrowband dipole antenna merged with the gate
electrode [3]. A metal grating gate is an efficient broadband
coupler between plasmons and THz radiation, but suffers from
poor responsivity [5]. This paper reviews recent advances in
ultrahigh sensitive, broadband THz detection based on InP-
based HEMTs incorporating authors’ original asymmetric
double-grating-gate (A-DGG) structure.
boundaries is greatly enhanced by applying different gate
voltages Vg1 and Vg2 to the two different sub-gratings of the A-
DGG. Terahertz electric current distribution and resultant
photovoltaic response were numerically simulated using a self-
consistent electromagnetic approach combined with the
perturbation theory for the hydrodynamic equations for 2D
plasmons in HEMTs [6]. Figure 2a shows the electric-current
distribution, underneath an A-DGG unit cell. It is clearely seen
that the photocurrent (thus the responsivity) dramatically
increases in the undepleted regions, as the portions of the
channel under the second sub-grating gates is strongly
depleted. One can see a giant enhancement of responsivity by
four orders of magnitude (Fig.2a) in asymmetric structures (d1
 d2) compared to conventional symmetric ones (d1 = d2). Two
different processes may be considered to analyze the
enhancement of the photovoltage in our A-DGG-FET
structures: i) resonant excitation of plasmon modes in
undepleted portions of the 2D electron channel that generate
strong THz photocurrent due to the nonlinear behavior of these
plasmons, and ii) non resonant excitation of overdamped
plasmons in depleted regions. The strong depleting of those

II. DEVICE STRUCTURE AND ANALYSIS

Typical A-DGG HEMT structure of the authors’ proposal
Figure 1. Fig. 1. Schematic view and SEM images of an A-DGG HEMT
[6] is depicted in Fig. 1. The asymmetry of the cavity THz detector. Lg1 = 200 nm, Lg2 = 1.6 ȝm, d1 = 200 nm, d2 = 400 nm.

978-1-4673-6132-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

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(a)
Figure 4. Simulated current distribution (a) and responsivity (b) for an A-
DGG HEMT. Lg1 = 200 nm, Lg2 = 800 nm, d1 = 200 nm, d2 = 400 nm.
regions greatly enhances the channel resistance, which leads to
enormous enhancement of the photovoltage induced between
the source and drain contacts of the entire A-DGG-FET
structure. Therefore these structures combine the advantages of
both, resonant and non-resonant plasmonic THz detectors.
III. EXPERIMENTS
A-DGG HEMTs have been designed and fabricated using
InAlAs/InGaAs/InP heterostructure material systems (Fig. 1).
The asymmetric factor, d1/d2, was fixed to be 0.5. A chirped
grating structure for the G1 finger Lg1 was introduced, which
can compensate the electron density chirp along the channel
under a specific drain-source bias Vds condition [7]. Figure 3
shows measured responsivities at 300 K (a) and related noise
equivalent power (NEP) (b) under 1-THz radiation.
Responsivities of as high as 2.2 kV/W and NEP below 15
pW/¥Hz have been obtained [7]. These values are lower than
those of commercial room temperature THz detectors such as
Golay cells (200 - 400 pW/¥Hz) or SBDs (100 pW/¥Hz).
Figure 4(a) shows measured photovoltaic response under 292-
GHz radiation at low temperatures (50 K, 75 K and 125 K) [8].
By decreasing the temperature, one can see a peak evolving as
a shoulder and narrowing on the detection curves. This peak is
identified as gated plasmon resonance under the unbiased
portions of the channel. The frequency width of this resonance
can be estimated as įf = (f/2)*( įUg1/(Ug1 - Uth1)) where f is the
incident frequency. This width varies from 279 GHz to 100
GHz when the temperature decreases. This corresponds to the
plasma waves damping time of the order of 20 ps and an
intrinsic fast response speed of the same order. Figure 4(b)
shows measured responsivities at 300 K when constant source
to drain voltages Vds are applied under illumination at 1, 1.5
and 2 THz. One can see marked increase in responsivity from
0.4 to 6.4 kV/W at 1.5 THz when Vds reaches 0.4 V and the
responsivity showing a monotonic decrease with increase in
radiation frequency [8]. The obtained responsivity in the THz
range is more than one order of magnitude higher than any
existing SBD-based detectors.
IV. CONCLUSION
InP-based A-DGG HEMTs demonstrated an ultrahigh
sensitive and fast THz detection with superior low noise power.
Further enhancement on the THz detection responsivity is
expected by increasing the asymmetry of the A-DGG.
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ThD1-1 (Invited)
8:30 - 9:00
Figure 2. Measured responsivity (a) and NEP (b) under drain-unbiased
conditions at 1, 1.5, and 2 THz at 300K.
Figure 3. Measured responsivity in resonant mode at 292 GHz at low
temperatures under drain-unbiased conditions (a) and in nonresonant mode at
1.5 THz at 300K under drain-biased conditions (b).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by the JST-ANR WITH, Japan.
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