Carrier dynamics and enhanced terahertz generation in GaAs photoconductive emitters with microstructures

Surface states are expected to play a key role in broadband terahertz (THz) emitters, where photoexcited carrier distributions are confined within about 1 μm of the surface. Optical pump and THz probe spectroscopy was used to study the dynamics of nonequilibrium charge carriers in both textured and non-textured GaAs substrates. Our findings show that the textured surface acts as an antireflective layer, greatly boosting the infrared pump laser's coupling efficiency into the semi-insulating GaAs substrate. Additionally, texturing introduces a trap-assisted recombination pathway, speeding up carrier relaxation and thus reducing Joule heating. Under the same pumping and bias field conditions, the coarse-textured GaAs photoconductive antenna shows nearly 7.85 times stronger THz emission amplitude than the non-textured device, along with improvement in signal-to-noise ratio. At a fixed bias field, higher pump power increases photogenerated carrier density, causing bias field screening and subsequent saturation of THz emission. At fixed pump power, when the bias field reaches ~2.5 kV/cm, both THz emission and photocurrent spectra show a clear kink, signaling intervalley scattering from the Γ valley to the L(X) valleys under high electric fields.