In a grating-coupled high-electron-mobility transistor, weak terahertz emission with wavelength around 400um was observed by using a Fourier-transform spectrometer. The absolute terahertz emission power was extracted from a strong background blackbody emission by using a modulation technique. The power of terahertz emission is proportional to the drain-source current, while the power of blackbody emission has a distinct relation with the electrical power. The dependence on the drain-source bias and the gate voltage suggests that the terahertz emission is induced by accelerated electrons interacting with the grating.
We report on the characterization of a room temperature terahertz detector based on a GaN/AlGaN high electron mobility transistor integrated with three patch antennas.Experimental results prove that both horizontal and perpendicular electric fields are induced in the electron channel.A photocurrent is generated when the electron channel is strongly modulated by the gate voltage.Despite the large channel length and gate-source/drain distance, significant horizontal and perpendicular fields are achieved.The device is well described by the self-mixing of terahertz fields in the electron channel.The noise-equivalent power and responsivity are estimated to be 100 nW/（Hz）^（1/2） and 3 mA/ W at 292 K,respectively.No decrease in responsivity is observed up to a modulation frequency of 5 kHz. The detector performance can be further improved by engineering the source-gate-drain geometry to enhance the nonlinearity.
