The Design of Terahertz Monolithic Integrated Frequency Multipliers Based on Gallium Arsenide Material.

Jin Meng,Zhi Jin,Luwei Qi,Jingtao Zhou,Xiaoyu Liu,Dehai Zhang

doi:10.3390/mi11030336

Abstract

A global design method for a terahertz monolithic integrated frequency multiplier is proposed. Compared with a traditional independent design, the method in this paper adopts overall optimization and combines the device with the circuit design. The advantage is that it provides a customized design for frequency multipliers according to specifications. On the basis of the gallium arsenide process of the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, two types of Schottky diodes have been developed to meet the needs of different designs. On the one hand, a Schottky diode with a 3 μm junction’s diameter was used in the design of the 200 GHz balanced doubler and, on the other hand, a diode with a 5 μm diameter was used in the 215 GHz unbalanced tripler. The measured results indicated that the output power of the doubler was more than 250 μW at 180~218 GHz, and the maximum was 950 μW at 198 GHz when driven with 12.3 mW, whereas that of the tripler was above 5 mW at 210~218 GHz and the maximum exceeded 10 mW. Such frequency multiplier sources could be widely used in terahertz imaging, radiometers, and so on.

Highlights

In recent decades, terahertz technology has been used for a variety of applications such as communication, earth atmospheric sensing, space astrophysics, etc. [1,2,3,4,5]
The generation of a terahertz signal generally uses solid-state frequency multipliers based on Schottky diodes in order to reduce mass, volume and, complexity
To increase the cutoff frequency and reduce the transmission loss, several competing semiconductor technologies such as frameless membrane and substrate transfer technique have been used in terahertz monolithic integrated circuit (TMIC) design [6,7,8,9] As compared with the TMIC, the studies on frequency multipliers at terahertz wave range, in China, have mainly focused on a hybrid integrated circuit (HIC) with discrete Schottky diodes [10,11,12,13,14]

Summary

Introduction

Terahertz technology has been used for a variety of applications such as communication, earth atmospheric sensing, space astrophysics, etc. [1,2,3,4,5]. Advances in terahertz sources and detectors have facilitated the development of these terahertz applications. The generation of a terahertz signal generally uses solid-state frequency multipliers based on Schottky diodes in order to reduce mass, volume and, complexity. To increase the cutoff frequency and reduce the transmission loss, several competing semiconductor technologies such as frameless membrane and substrate transfer technique have been used in terahertz monolithic integrated circuit (TMIC) design [6,7,8,9] As compared with the TMIC, the studies on frequency multipliers at terahertz wave range, in China, have mainly focused on a hybrid integrated circuit (HIC) with discrete Schottky diodes [10,11,12,13,14]. The details of steps mentioned above are discussed

Materials and Device

Results

Conclusions