Dan Corcos

Room-temperature THz imaging based on antenna-coupled MOSFET bolometer

We report on the design, fabrication and measurements of a new THz sensor concept based on an antenna-coupled MOSFET bolometer for room-temperature passive THz imaging for security and medical-diagnostic applications. The device is fabricated in a 180-nm CMOS SOI technology followed by a post-CMOS MEMS process. In this sensor, the antenna absorbing the THz electromagnetic field is directly coupled to the bolometer for maximum energy collection, whereas its design aims at minimizing its thermal mass as is necessary for fast frame rates. DC measurements before and after the MEMS process as well as thermal time constant and THz antenna measurements are presented.

Design of a wide-bandwidth on-chip antenna for uncooled passive THz imaging

The design of a broadband on-chip antenna for passive THz imaging in the frequency range of 0.6 THz to 1.4 THz is reported. The antenna design has to fulfill the requirements of the IBM CMOS process and the MEMS post CMOS processing. The antenna is coupled directly to the sensor, a MOSFET bolometer. Because of this direct coupling and the need for real time imaging, only extremely physically small antennas are feasible. Hence, typical broadband antennas like the toothed log-periodic antenna are not useable for this application and new antenna approaches have to be examined.

Wideband planar skirt antenna and its application for the detection of terahertz radiation

A new type of traveling wave antenna is presented. Key features of the antenna are planar, low mass and wide bandwidth of operation. One such antenna was designed for terahertz radiation detection and realized in standard IBM CMOS-SOI process with subsequent MEMS post processing. Measurements performed at 655GHz showed very good agreement with the theoretical predictions based on full wave simulations. The present article describes the antenna physics, design, fabrication and measurement results.