Novel Optimized Hybrid Terahertz Photoconductive Antennas

We demonstrate the results of on THz emission from hybrid THz photoconductive antenna loaded with silver nanoantenna. The results of experimental investigations are in a good agreement with numerical simulations presented in our recent work. The conversion efficiency reveals over 5-fold improvement at certain frequencies, if compared with similar photoconductive antenna without silver nanoparticles, while previous results for this type of antenna barely exceeded 2-fold conversion efficiency gain. We propose a cost-effective fabrication procedure to realize such hybrid THz antennas with optimized plasmonic nanostructures via thermal dewetting process, which does not require any post processing and makes the proposed solution very attractive for applications. (paper)