Detection of terahertz radiation by resonant tunneling nanoheterostructures

Abstract

The phenomenon of terahertz radiation detection by resonant tunneling structures (RTSs) has been studied. The calculations of the changes ΔI 0 in the direct current (DC) component I 0 under the action of an alternating electric field were carried out by the solution of a nonstationary Schrodinger equation with a time-periodic electric field based on the Floquet mode expansion of the wave functions. The dependences of the DC component I 0 in resonant tunneling structures on the frequency ν and AC signal amplitude V ac have been built. It is shown that the ΔI 0 value in triple-barrier RTSs at resonance frequency ≈ -( and are the energies of the size-quantized levels) can exceed a low-frequency value by more than an order of magnitude. The parameters of the structures have been optmized, in order to use them in the terahertz radiation detectors in the anbsence of an external bias. The possibility of tuning the resonance frequency in the terahertz range by changing the DC bias has been shown.