Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Our research program over the past five years has targeted the advancement of terahertz (THz) technology. This work has been facilitated through several major grants and partnerships with industry leading to considerable expertise and numerous collaborations. With this new Discovery Grant application, we seek to create new technology in several promising new directions that have been identified in our prior activities. This work is centered on Guided Terahertz Technology and Systems and comprises three main areas: THz sources and detectors, THz waveguide technology and THz system integration. A major objective is to develop components and systems in which THz waves are entirely confined within waveguide structures, rather than radiating as free-space beams as is typically done in today’s systems. It is anticipated that this work will result in terahertz-based tools and instruments that will offer higher dynamic range, lower cost, and more widespread utility than today’s free-space terahertz technology.
Our recent work with sources and detectors was motivated by the requirements of higher transmitted power and better receiver sensitivity, and by the desire to work with optical pump wavelengths near 1550 nm where lasers and components developed for telecommunications are far less expensive than those commonly used shorter wavelengths. Newly proposed research focuses on the use of photoconductor devices with nano-scale plasmonic electrode structures to improve efficiency and mid-band-gap absorption in Gallium Arsenide and other materials to shift operation to 1550 nm. These approaches offer at least a factor of 10 increase in output power or receiver sensitivity while reducing cost.
We have recently made substantial contributions in the area of low-loss waveguides for terahertz applications, demonstrating practical slot-line structures. An objective for future work is to incorporate these low-loss waveguides into THz systems and improve the coupling to sources and detectors to make more efficient systems.
Work in THz systems targets the direct excitation of low-loss waveguides from photoconductor chips to enable terahertz systems with increased utility and dynamic range. Other novel systems concepts will be developed. Of particular interest is a novel spectrometer system that uses coherence to replace conventional time- or frequency-domain systems, with considerable potential reduction in cost.
THz instruments have become important in a variety of industrial and scientific applications, as the radiation is non-ionizing (safe) and offers unique propagation characteristics through interesting materials. Present applications are found in industrial inspection, pharmacology, and imaging. Future applications in these areas and information and communications industries will be enabled through realization of the goals of this project.