Integrated THz Spectroscopy exploiting On-chip Scattering and Device Nonlinearity

利用片上散射和器件非线性的集成太赫兹光谱

• 批准号: 1509560
• 负责人: Kaushik Sengupta
• 金额: $ 32万
• 依托单位: Princeton University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1509560&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Integrated; THz; Spectroscopy; exploiting; chip; Integrated; THz; Spectroscopy; exploiting; chip

Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy has a wide range of potential applications in imaging, non-destructive quality control, biomedical, chemical and air pollution sensing, cell biology, crystal engineering, identification of explosives and counterfeit drugs. However, lack of adequate and cost-effective instrumentation development in this spectral region has contributed to it being called the 'THz' gap, and has adversely affected the development of its application space. However, with new developments in nanotechnology, material science and optics, there has been a resurgence of active research interest in this frequency range and the research community are approaching the technology development from a broad range of scientific disciplines. The success of this project can enable robust, low-cost integrated, THz spectroscopic systems for the aforementioned applications. Such low-cost solutions for the THz frequency region will enable researchers and scientists engaged in this field to rapidly innovate on new technologies that can find extensive use in our daily lives. The PI also expects that this research will engage and train both graduate and undergraduate students in multi-disciplinary fields, which are vitally important for solving challenging research problems for the future. The PI will also engage high-school seniors from local schools and broadly disseminate the knowledge through his proposed two courses and through publications, seminars and workshops.THz-based spectroscopy is purported to have a wide range of applications in biomedical and chemical analysis. Current technology to perform THz spectroscopy in the time domain mostly relies on expensive optics including femtosecond lasers, photoconductive substrates, nonlinear optical elements and mechanical components making the system expensive, bulky and not amenable to integration. On the other hand, solid-state technology performs frequency domain spectroscopy using the classical down-conversion architecture. It requires a large bank of frequency synthesizers and multipliers covering the entire THz range making it unsuitable for integration. This proposal presents an electromagnetics-circuits-nonlinear estimation crosscut approach to enable chip-scale THz spectroscopy at room temperature through extraction of spectral information from electromagnetic scattering. The key idea is that an electromagnetic interface between the on-chip receiver and the incoming THz wave itself creates an opportunity to perform spectral analysis of the incident signal, without requiring the traditional receiver following it. This proposal seeks to establish the analytical framework for spectral estimation by measuring on-chip electromagnetic scattering. It proposes techniques to estimate such scattering by measuring on-chip the magnitude of the induced surface current distribution on the planar antenna structure due to the incidence of the THz wave. In addition, this proposal also seeks to exploit nonlinearity of the detectors to extract time-domain signature or phase information of the spectrum of the incident signal. This can potentially enable battery-powered, chip-scale THz spectroscopes for a wide range of sensing and imaging applications.

Terahertz（THZ）光谱学在成像，非破坏性质量控制，生物医学，化学和空气污染传感，细胞生物学，晶体工程，炸药和假冒药物的识别中具有广泛的潜在应用。但是，该光谱区域缺乏足够且具有成本效益的仪器开发，导致其被称为“ THZ”差距，并且对其应用空间的发展产生了不利影响。但是，随着纳米技术，材料科学和光学技术的新发展，在该频率范围内已经有积极的研究兴趣复兴，研究界正在从广泛的科学学科中接近技术发展。该项目的成功可以为上述应用提供鲁棒，低成本的THZ光谱系统。 THZ频率区域的这种低成本解决方案将使研究人员和科学家能够从事这一领域的研究，以迅速创新，这些技术可以在我们的日常生活中找到广泛使用。 PI还希望这项研究将在多学科领域参与和培训研究生和本科生，这对于解决未来具有挑战性的研究问题至关重要。 PI还将吸引来自当地学校的高中生，并通过其拟议的两道课程和出版物，研讨会和研讨会来广泛传播知识。据称，基于THZ的光谱学可以在生物医学和化学分析中广泛应用。当前在时域执行THZ光谱的技术主要依赖于昂贵的光学元件，包括飞秒激光器，光负电导的底物，非线性光学元件和机械组件，使系统昂贵，笨重并且不适合集成。另一方面，固态技术使用经典的下调架构执行频域光谱。它需要大量的频率合成器和乘数覆盖整个THZ范围，这使其不适合集成。该提案提出了一种电磁通路 - 非线性估计横切方法，可以通过从电磁散射中提取光谱信息在室温下在室温下进行芯片尺度的THZ光谱。 关键的想法是，片上接收器和传入THZ波本身之间的电磁界面创造了对入射信号进行光谱分析的机会，而无需传统的接收器之后。 该建议旨在通过测量片上电磁散射来建立光谱估计的分析框架。 它提出了通过测量由于THZ波的发生而在平面天线结构上诱导的表面电流分布的片量来估算这种散射的技术。 此外，该提案还试图利用检测器的非线性提取入射信号频谱的时间域签名或相位信息。这可能有可能使电池供电的芯片尺度THZ光谱镜用于广泛的感应和成像应用。