Cantilever-based photoacoustic sensor for terahertz range

Advantages of photoacoustic detection with a silicon cantilever microphone are demonstrated in the THz range. In our method, earlier membrane microphone is replaced with robust silicon cantilever microphone, which can tolerate high intensity of the input radiation in contrast to vulnerable membrane. The responsivity of the photoacoustic sensor was confirmed to be constant over almost six orders of magnitude of input power, which is not easy to achieve with any other detector of THz radiation. Another favorable feature of the photoacoustic sensor is its uniform spatial responsivity over areas of several millimeters in size. Finally, we measured nearly constant spectral responsivity of the photoacoustic sensor for the wavelength range of 0.3 µm to 200 µm.