  Precise and ultrafast control over photo-induced charge currents across
nanoscale interfaces could lead to important applications in energy harvesting,
ultrafast electronics, and coherent terahertz sources. Recent studies have
shown that several relativistic mechanisms, including inverse spin-Hall effect,
inverse Rashba-Edelstein effect and inverse spin-orbit-torque effect, can
convert longitudinally injected spin-polarized currents from magnetic materials
to transverse charge currents, thereby harnessing these currents for terahertz
generation. However, these mechanisms typically require external magnetic
fields and suffer from low spin-polarization rates and low efficiencies of
relativistic spin-to-charge conversion. In this work, we present a novel
nonrelativistic and nonmagnetic mechanism that directly utilizes the
photo-excited high-density charge currents across the interface. We demonstrate
that the electrical anisotropy of conductive oxides RuO2 and IrO2 can
effectively deflect injected charge currents to the transverse direction,
resulting in efficient and broadband terahertz radiation. Importantly, this new
mechanism has the potential to offer much higher conversion efficiency compared
to previous methods, as conductive materials with large electrical anisotropy
are readily available, whereas further increasing the spin-Hall angle of
heavy-metal materials would be challenging. Our new findings offer exciting
possibilities for directly utilizing these photo-excited high-density currents
across metallic interfaces for ultrafast electronics and terahertz
spectroscopy.
