PN junction for room temperature terahertz detection

PN junction plays a crucial role in modern semiconductor technology but is disappeared in room-temperature terahertz detectors due to a few milli–electron volts of low terahertz photon energy and dominated intrinsic thermal excitation in narrow bandgap materials. Herein, we report a room-temperature terahertz PN junction mechanism to realize terahertz detection by injecting electrons into the junction through the electromagnetic-induced well (EIW) effect, while facilitating electron transport via the junction's built-in electric field. Based on the proposed detection mechanism, heterojunction is constructed with two materials, PdSe 2 and MoTe 2 , and it realizes zero-bias detection at room temperature in the terahertz band, effectively addressing the challenges of terahertz detectors. The NEP of the detector is superior to the reported terahertz zero-bias detectors by more than one order of magnitude. Our results break through the response spectral range of PN junction detectors at room temperature and realize high performance of zero-bias terahertz detection. In this paper, terahertz photovoltaic detection of PN junctions in room temperature environment is realized for the first time based on the combination of electromagnetic induced well (EIW) effect and built-in electric field.