Ultrafast phenomena in freestanding LT-GaAs devices

Abstract

We report on the fabrication and high-frequency performance of our photodetectors and photomixers based on freestanding low-temperature-grown GaAs. The MBE-grown low-temperature GaAs layers are lifted from the native GaAs substrate and transferred on top of variety of host substrates. The freestanding devices exhibit breakdown electrical fields above 200 kV/cm and dark currents below 3 × 10-7 A at 100 V bias. Device photoresponse shows 0.55 ps wide electrical transients with voltage amplitudes up to 1.3 V, measured using an electro-optical sampling technique with 100 fs wide laser pulses. Photomixing experiments at 460 GHz yield a 9 times higher output power for the freestanding device on Si/SiO2 host substrate compared to the native substrate.