CMOS Platform for Terahertz

Emergence of CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Silicon) integrated circuits (IC’s) technology as a means for realization of capable and affordable systems that operate at 300GHz and higher is making everyday applications using this portion of spectrum possible. Despite the fact that the unity maximum available gain frequency, fmax of NMOS transistors has peaked at ~320GHz somewhere between 65 and 22-nm technology nodes, signal generation up to 1.3 THz, coherent detection up to 1.2 THz and incoherent detection up to ~10 THz have been demonstrated using CMOS integrated circuits. Furthermore, highly integrated rotational spectroscopy transceiver operating up to near 300GHz, 300-GHz and 400-GHz concurrent transceiver pixels for high resolution imaging, and high data rate 300-GHz transmitters and receivers for communication have been demonstrated in CMOS. The nonlinear devices and circuit techniques that enable the operation at frequencies beyond fmax as well as affordable techniques for packaging and testing of the circuits will be discussed. Lastly, efforts to open the terahertz portion of spectrum for daily use by many, including electronic nose/smelling using rotational spectroscopy that can detect and quantify concentrations of a wide variety of gases; imaging technique that can enable operation of autonomous systems in a wide range of challenging weather conditions; high-bandwidth communication; and far infrared electronic detection that can make thermal imaging/night vision affordable will be discussed