On the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz light is
located between infrared radiation and microwaves. It holds
enormous potential for tomorrow’s technologies: Among other things,
it might succeed 5G by enabling extremely fast mobile
communications connections and wireless networks. The bottleneck in
the transition from gigahertz to terahertz frequencies has been
caused by insufficiently efficient sources and converters. A
German-Spanish research team with the participation of the
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now developed a
material system to generate terahertz pulses much more effectively
than before. It is based on graphene, i.e., a super-thin carbon
sheet, coated with a metallic lamellar structure. The research
group presented its results in the journal ACS Nano.