Traveling-wave photomixers fabricated on high energy nitrogen-ion-implanted GaAs

The authors report on fabrication and measurement of traveling-wave photomixers based on high energy and low dose nitrogen-ion-implanted GaAs. They used 3 MeV energy to implant N+ ions into GaAs substrates with an ion concentration dose of 3x10(12) cm(-2). The N+-implanted GaAs photomixers exhibit improvements in the output power in comparison with their counterparts, photomixers fabricated on low-temperature-grown GaAs. The maximal output power was 2.64 mu W at 850 GHz. No saturation of the output power with increased bias voltage and optical input power was observed. These characteristics make N+-implanted GaAs the material of choice for efficient high power sources of terahertz radiation. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics