THz Radiation Efficiency Enhancement from Metal-ITO Nonlinear Metasurfaces

Strong single-cycle THz emission has been demonstrated from nonlinear plasmonic metasurfaces, when excited by femtosecond laser pulses. In order to invoke a higher nonlinear response, such metasurfaces have been coupled to thin indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films, which exhibit an epsilon-near zero (ENZ) behavior in the excitation wavelength range and enhance the nonlinear conversion. However, the THz conductivity of the ITO film also reduces the radiation efficiency of the meta-atoms constituting the metasurface. To overcome this, we etch the ITO layer around the plasmonic meta-atoms, which allows harnessing of the enhanced localized fields due to the ENZ behavior of the remaining ITO film, while improving the THz radiation efficiency. We report an increase of more than 1 order of magnitude in the emitted THz spectral power density, while the energy conversion efficiency approaches 10^-6. This simple yet very effective fabrication scheme provides important progress toward increasing the range of applications of nonlinear plasmonic metasurface THz emitters.