Logic gates for terahertz frequencies fabricated by three-dimensional printing

Abstract

The so-called terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum falls in a spectral region where traditional electronic technologies fail to operate owing to the extremely short switching times required. In this paper, we demonstrate the design of three optical logic gates fabricated by three-dimensional printing, which can perform the OR, AND, and XOR logic operations at 130 GHz. In order to optimize our designs we used a finite element electromagnetic simulation. The amplitude spectra of the experimental measurements of the three devices are presented where good agreement between the numerical results and experimental data can be seen. These results lead to the possibility of building more complex logic circuits based on these three photonic logic gates.