The Conduction Current and Displacement Current in a Terahertz Antenna (2011)

A semi classical Monte Carlo model has been presented to study the time-varying conduction current and displacement current in a Terahertz photoconductive antenna after photo excitation and hence conduction current and displacement current in a biased GaAs photoconductive antenna after fs laser pulse excitation as a function of bias voltage, pump pulse energy was then analysed. The conduction current is due to the rapid changes in the number of photo-generation carriers after sub picosecond pulse and photo carriers are accelerated at bias applied field whereas the displacement current is due to the photo carrier-induced field redistribution. The light-intensity dependence mainly influences the pulse amplitudes of the conduction current and the displacement current and THz wave. The simulation results showed that conduction current and displacement current are source of THz waveform radiated by bias photoconductive current. Graphs of the THz waveform for 8pJ pump pulse energy at different bias field. The left of THz waveforms are produced by conduction current and the right are produced by displacement current.

Silicon Micromachined Microlens Array for THz Antenna

The feature of silicon micromachining technique enables one to microfabricate unlimited number of microlens arrays at one time with good uniformity on a silicon wafer. Conventional approach of building single-pixel receivers and stacking them to form a multi-pixel receiver is not suited at THz because a single pixel receiver already has difficulty fitting into mass, volume, and power budgets, especially in space applications. This paper demonstrated the largest ever microfabricated silicon microlens array using silicon micromachining technique. Since this silicon microlens array can be easily integrated on ROC, it overcomes the antenna integration issue which is one of the key problems in building THz cameras and provides good aperture efficiency.

Photograph of silicon microlens array antenna. The chip size is approximately 3 cm x 3 cm.

Hybrid Spectral-Domain Ray Tracing Method for Fast Analysis of Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz-Integrated Antennas (2011)
This paper presents the theory of SRT and present computationally efficient self-consistent HSRT methods, MoM-SRT, and MLFMM-SRT, which require one spectral domain integration step for each observation point. The MLFMM-SRT and MoM-SRT methods are compared with measurements and commercially available MoM software, MLFMM and PO via simulation of a bow-tie terahertz antenna backed by hyper-hemispherical silicon lens and an on-chip dipole lens antenna. The -plane radiation pattern of an edge-coupled traveling-wave photomixer integrated with a bow-tie antenna backed by a hyper-hemispherical lens was obtained using the MoM-SRT method. HSRT method is also applied to an on-chip terahertz dipole antenna lens structure integrated with a VCO in SiGe:C BiCMOS technology. The use of GPU parallel processing greatly accelerates computational time of HSRT and SRT.

An Indirect Impedance Characterization Method for Monolithic THz Antennas

This paper presents an indirect impedance characterization method of a THz antenna monolithically integrated with diodes. The method is based coplanar probe measurements. The measurements from an accessible location (e.g. DC-out pad) provide experimental data to evaluate the impedance seen by the diode. It is shown that the method is in good agreement with fullwave simulations except when singularities arise particularly when the electrical length between the accessible location (DC-out pad) and the diode location is near a multiple of one-half wavelength.

The impedance seen at the diode location extracted analytically and compared with the HFSS simulation result: (a) real and (b) imaginary.

The double slot antenna structures. (a) The physical dimensions and (b) Two port representation of the antenna.

An Indirect Impedance Characterization Method for Monolithic THz Antennas Using Coplanar Probe Measurements
This paper presents an indirect impedance characterization method for planar THz antennas monolithically integrated with electronic sensor devices. The method is based on coplanar contact-probe measurements taken at an accessible location (e.g., a readout pad) providing crucial experimental data to verify the impedance seen by the integrated device. It was demonstrated that this simple approach is in good agreement with full-wave simulations,with a possible exception when the electrical length between the contact-probe location and the device port is close to a multiple of a half-wavelength. This ambiguity can easily be alleviated using a modified geometry for the contact-pad and conducting an additional set of probe measurements.

Butterfly antenna structure: (a) physical dimensions and (b) two-port representation of the antenna.

Extracted impedance values with a time-gating applied on the measurements to improve the response for frequencies higher than 60 GHz: (a) real and (b) imaginary part.

Terahertz Photoconductive Antennas: Principles and Applications (2011)

Terahertz photoconductive antennas are among the most promising devices that are used to harness the unique properties of terahertz waves for variety of applications, such as security, biology and medicine, medical imaging, material spectroscopy and sensing, and monitoring and spectroscopy in pharmaceutical industry. Operation principles of terahertz photoconductive antennas (THz-PCAs) in terahertz pulsed and continuous-wave (cw) measurement systems are presented and their transmission and reception properties in pulsed and cw operation modes were investigated. Wideband THz-PCAs such as large and small apertures, spiral, and bow-tie antennas can be used to generate and detect THz signals with less antenna response effects on the generated and detected THz spectrum.

An aperture THz-PCA illuminated by a laser beam. The thickness of the photoconductor is assumed to be much less than the THz wavelength.

Far-field THz radiation pattern from photoconductive emitters on different substrates

The paper presents measured terahertz radiation patterns from antennas made of low temperature grown gallium arsenide on semi-insulating gallium arsenide and low temperature grown gallium arsenide on high resistivity silicon. A strong dependence on the substrate used for the terahertz source was observed. For civil security applications, quality and process control and other industrial applications terahertz (THz) technique is a promising tool. For LTG-GaAs on SI-GaAs as emitter substrate strong interferences and higher order diffraction effects are observed due to the refractive index step between the emitter substrate and the Si lens. These effects can be avoided by using LTG-GaAs on HR-Si substrate.

Schematic draw of the used setup. With stepper motors the fiber coupled THz detector is movable in x-, y- and z- direction.

Measurement of the THz radiation pattern for LTGGaAs on HR-Si as emitter substrate with a spectral bandwidth up to 1.8 THz at a distance of 65 mm in z-direction

Measurement of the THz radiation pattern for LTGGaAs on SI-GaAs as emitter substrate with a spectral bandwidth up to 1.8 THz at a distance of 65 mm in z-direction. The cross lines in blue show the intensity distribution at a) 0.5 THz and b) 1.2 THz.

Imaging Performance of a THz Focal Plane Array

A new broadband monolithic THz antenna design that covers the entire 0.6 1.2 THz band is developed as the imaging pixel of THz focal plane array (FPA). Heterostructure backward diodes are integrated monolithically with the THz antennas and are used as the detectors to reproduce digital images from the 2-dimensional received power distribution. A new simplified design is developed which is capable of focusing the antenna beams directly onto the image plane using an extended-hemispherical lens. Several new application areas, ranging from medical imaging to security screening and qualitative inspection of pharmaceuticals to microchip packaging are emerging.
Reception (far-field) patterns (H-plane) of a 25x1 array at 500 GHz using identical (solid lines) and modified (diodes at off-center) antennas (dashed lines).

k Image formation steps: The digital image is the result of the convolution of the reception pattern (a) with the object (b). The image is further enhanced when the pixel illumination is normalized in accordance to the reception pattern.

Wavenumber-Domain Theory of Terahertz Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Antenna

A theoretical study is presented on the characteristics of terahertz antennas formed by metallic single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) dipoles. Terahertz radiation, which bridges the gap between photonics and electronics, is particularly sensitive to the detailed structural and environmental properties of various materials. The ultrashort pulses of broadband THz radiation are applied in biomedical imaging and tomography, such as for skin cancer and cellular structure, as well as in DNA analysis, semiconductors characterization, material detection, etc. In addition, the detection of sharp spectral features and wireless communication may take advantage of continuous wave THz radiation. The employment of nanoantennas can minimize the THz emitter and receiver and localize the detection on nanoscale. It also favours the in vivo sensing technology, possibly inside a living cell. Numerical results show that the short dipole antennas at lower THz frequencies have much higher efficiency, broader bandwidth, and more stable frequency characteristics, which can be tuned by engineering their lengths and chiral indices.

Two-dimensional radiation pattern of the SWCNT dipole antenna (L = 10m = 3 ps) at the frequency of (a) 7.45 THz (b) 7.56 THz (c) 7.594 THz, and (d) 7.63 THz, where the maximum directivityD0 reaches the extreme value.

Terahertz Photoconductive Antenna Efficiency

Terahertz (THz) photoconductive antennas are the most common device for the generation and detection of THz waves and are very different from conventional RF/microwave antennas. One of the major problems of the current photoconductive antennas is that the antenna efficiency is very low, thus it is difficult to obtain high power THz waves. A new antenna efficiency expression is derived which clearly shows how the efficiency is linked to various parameters.

A THz Generation system

Total Efficiency