Abstract
Modern rapid prototyping technologies are now capable of build resolutions that allow direct fabrication of photonic structures in the GHz and THz frequency regimes. To demonstrate this, we have fabricated several structures with 3D electromagnetic bandgaps in the 100-400 GHz range. Characterization of these structures via THz Time-domain Spectroscopy (THz-TDS) shows very good agreement with simulation, confirming the build accuracy of the approach. This rapid and inexpensive 3-D fabrication method may be very useful for a variety of potential THz applications.
Highlights
Research involving the Terahertz (THz) spectrum has recently been experiencing rapid growth [1]
One of the major challenges remaining to be overcome involves the practical difficulties in component fabrication, as the feature dimensions of THz Electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) components fall in a transition region between the conventional micromachining techniques used for microwave applications and the micro/nano-fabrication methods in use at optical frequencies [8]
To validate the fabrication technique, we designed and fabricated two different EBG structures and measured their transmission responses via a THz Time-domain spectrometer (THz-TDS) that is available to the research group of one of the authors (HX)
Summary
Research involving the Terahertz (THz) spectrum (informally defined as 100 GHz—10 THz) has recently been experiencing rapid growth [1]. Several semiconductor fabrication approaches, including dicing saw machining [9], wet etching [10], deep reactive iron etching (DRIE) [11], deep X-ray lithography [12] and laser micromachining [8,12], have been reported These methods are expensive, and require extraordinary care to achieve even relatively uniform THz EBG geometries, let alone the more complicated structures such as defect cavities and waveguides. EBG waveguides [16], 3-D antennas [17] and band-pass filters [13] have been demonstrated These techniques were only successful at frequencies up to approximately 30 GHz. Received 13 Jun 2008; revised Sep 2008; accepted Sep 2008; published 1 Oct 2008 13 October 2008 / Vol 16, No 21 / OPTICS EXPRESS 16443 technology to achieve rapid and inexpensive fabrication of high-quality EBG structures in the THz range
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