Terahertz emission from layered GaTe crystal
due to surface lattice reorganization and in-plane
noncubic mobility anisotropy
JIANGPENG DONG,
1
KEVIN-P. GRADWOHL,
2
YADONG XU,
1,
*TAO WANG,
1
BINBIN ZHANG,
1
BAO XIAO,
1
CHRISTIAN TEICHERT,
2
AND WANQI JIE
1
1
State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Key Laboratory of
Radiation Detection Materials and Devices, School of Materials and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
2
Institute of Physics, Montanuniversitaet Leoben, Leoben 8700, Austria
*Corresponding author: xyd220@nwpu.edu.cn
Received 11 December 2018; revised 27 February 2019; accepted 6 March 2019; posted 7 March 2019 (Doc. ID 354787);
published 15 April 2019
In this work, a model based on the optical rectification effect and the photocurrent surge effect is proposed to
describe the terahertz emission mechanism of the layered GaTe crystal. As a centrosymmetric crystal, the optical
rectification effect arises from the breaki ng of the inversion symmetry, due to lattice reorganization of the crystal’s
surface layer. In addition, the photocurrent surge originating from the unidirectional charge carrier diffusion—
due to the noncubic mobility anisotropy within the layers—produces terahertz radiation. This is confirmed by
both terahertz emission spectroscopy and electric property characterization. The current surge perpendicular to
the layers also makes an important contribution to the terahertz radiation, which is consistent with its incident
angle dependence. Based on our results, we infer that the contribution of optical rectification changes from 90%
under normal incidence to 23% under a 40° incidence angle. The results not only demonstrate the terahertz
radiation properties of layered GaTe bulk crystals, but also promise the potential application of terahertz emission
spectroscopy for characterizing the surface properties of layered materials.
© 2019 Chinese Laser Press
https://doi.org/10.1364/PRJ.7.000518
1. INTRODUCTION
Layered semiconductors are attracting considerable interest for
their potential applications in next-generation optoelectronics
and electronics [1]. Many layered materials have been explored,
from graphite to metal chalcogenides, such as MoS
2
, WS
2
,
GaSe, and GaS [2–6]. At the same time, the research has ex-
panded from the visible light over the infrared region to the
terahertz (THz) region. In particular, the THz region of the
electromagnetic spectrum has been arousing ever-increasing
interest in the last decade, since it has offered considerable
applications in nondestructive evaluation, security inspection,
medicine imaging, art conservation [7–10], etc. Recently, the
THz emission properties of graphene have been exploited in
several pioneering experiments [11–13]. Layered transition
metal dichalcogenides (TMDC)—such as MoS
2
[14,15], WS
2
[16], and WSe
2
[17]—have attracted significant interest as
THz emission materials. The 2H polytype of MoS
2
is of special
interest for this work, since it exhibits THz generation based on
breaking of surface symmetry and second-order dielectric
polarization. Furt hermore, GaSe has proven to be a promising
candidate for being a THz source and tuning material [5].
Besides MoS
2
and GaSe, GaTe is an important member of
the metal chalcogenide semiconductor family. Its optical and
electrical properties have been investigated for decades, since
it can be used for radiation detection at room temperature [18],
for visible light photodetectors [19], and for thermal energy
devices [20]. However, very little is known about the THz
radiation properties of GaTe [21]. GaTe exhibits two kinds
of Ga-Ga bonds within a layer; two-thirds are oriented
perpendicularly to the layers, while one-third lie within the
layers. Because of the in-plane Ga-Ga bonds, GaTe crystals
show a noncubic in-plane anisotropy, which also results in the
materials’ unique electrical and optical properties, not observed
in most other layered semiconductors [22–24]. Compared to
the other layered materials, GaTe is a monoclinic crystal and
has only a twofold rotation symmetry along the c axis and
perpendicular to the (−210) layer plane . The bulk cr ystal is ad-
ditionally centrosymmetric. Therefore, all the components of
the second-order electric susceptibility tensor vanish.
However, there are also reports that the surface atomic struc-
ture is different from the bulk crystal [25,26], i.e., a hexagonal
structure on the macroscale and a local monoclinic one at the
518
Vol. 7, No. 5 / May 2019 / Photonics Research
Research Article
2327-9125/19/050518-08 Journal © 2019 Chinese Laser Press