Objectives:

While development in photomixers has progressed in the last 20 years, one of the key remaining problem has been to optimise the out-coupling of the THz wave for a given application. The work will concentrate on Earth observation and will look at optimising antenna designs for the given bands of interest. This research work will contribute to answering TERAOPTICS’ research Challenge IV and Challenge V.

Expected Results:

The work will first concentrate in design of optimised antenna for the set of bands used in Earth observation that are accessible with UTC-PD photomixers. Great care will be taken in matching the impedance of the UTC -PD with the antenna over the band of interest. Further we envisage looking at antennas not emitting through the substrate to enable the possibility to easily fabricate phased arrays with a minimum risk of on-chip interference. The ESR will be expected to investigate all the different solutions to couple the signal out and possibly in for detection (Conventional metalized bow ties, slot antennas, plasmonic based antennas, metamaterials…).
The research and development work will mainly contribute to the targeted THz key application “space”.

Planned secondment(s):

• to ULIL (Prof. Guillaume Ducournau), ~M20 for ~ 1.5 months, for antenna measurement and emission patterns
• to RAL (Prof. Peter Huggard), M28 for 3 months, for testing devices with THz receivers