Surface plasmon enhanced THz emission with nanoporous gold supported CdTe.

Terahertz emission by ultrafast excitation of semiconductor/metal interfaces was found strongly enhanced by plasmon resonance. Here, a three-dimensional nanoporous gold (NPG) was used to form semiconductor/metal compound with cadmium telluride (CdTe). We investigated the specific impact of surface plasmon from randomly nanoporous structure in the ultrafast optoelectronic response for THz generation, and observed a THz amplitude enhancement around an order of magnitude from CdTe on NPG compared to that from CdTe on silicon. Moreover, the plasmon enhancement for THz emission from NPG is stronger than that from gold film, indicating that randomly nanoporous structure is also effective for plasmonic enhancement in THz band.