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Broadband and tunable terahertz absorption via photogenerated carriers in undoped silicon

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Abstract

Terahertz absorbers based on doped silicon have achieved broadband and high-efficiency absorption due to their high concentration of carriers. However, their tunable performance is obviously insufficient. Here, we propose a new scheme for active terahertz absorption based on undoped silicon with a metamaterial antireflection layer, which realizes both strong absorption and ultrahigh modulation depth. Benefiting from the weak absorption and high transmission of undoped silicon for 1064-nm continuous wave, uniformly distributed carriers across the entire thickness of the absorber are excited, and efficient free carrier absorption of the terahertz wave is obtained. We use only a 500-μm thick absorber and achieve absorption greater than 90% in the range of 0.58 to 1.92 THz, with a peak value of 99%. More important, the absorber can be switched between two working states of nonabsorption and high-efficiency absorption by changing the pump power, which means the modulation depth reaches 100%. This simple and high-performance implementation scheme provides a new idea for the design of terahertz tunable absorbers.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronics Information Technology (Tianjin University), Ministry of Education, School of Precision Instruments and Opto-Electronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Jie Li, Jitao Li, Chenglong Zheng, Longhai Liu, Zhen Yue, Hang Xu, Xuanruo Hao, Yating Zhang & Jianquan Yao

  2. Advantest (China) Co., Ltd., Shanghai, 201203, China

    Longhai Liu

  3. Information Materials and Device Applications Key Laboratory of Sichuan Provincial Universities, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, 610225, China

    Fuyu Li & Tingting Tang

Authors
  1. Jie Li
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  2. Jitao Li
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  3. Chenglong Zheng
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  4. Longhai Liu
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  5. Zhen Yue
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  6. Hang Xu
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  8. Fuyu Li
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  9. Tingting Tang
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  10. Yating Zhang
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  11. Jianquan Yao
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yating Zhang or Jianquan Yao.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61675147, 61735010, and 91838301), and National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0700202).

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Li, J., Li, J., Zheng, C. et al. Broadband and tunable terahertz absorption via photogenerated carriers in undoped silicon. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 65, 214211 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-021-1799-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-021-1799-7

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