All-Electronic Emitter-Detector Pairs for 250 GHz in Silicon

Abstract

The spread of practical terahertz (THz) systems dedicated to the telecommunication, pharmacy, civil security, or medical markets requires the use of mainstream semiconductor technologies, such as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) lines. In this paper, we discuss the operation of a CMOS-based free space all-electronic system operating near 250 GHz, exhibiting signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with 62 dB in the direct detection regime for one Hz equivalent noise bandwidth. It combines the state-of-the-art detector based on CMOS field-effect-transistors (FET) and a harmonic voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). Three generations of the oscillator circuit are presented, and the performance characterization techniques and their improvement are explained in detail. The manuscript presents different emitter–detector pair operation modalities, including spectroscopy and imaging.

Keywords

• opto-pair
• CMOS
• voltage-controlled oscillator
• THz detection
• THz imaging
• field-effect transistor