In this article a monolithic resonant terahertz sensor element with a noise equivalent power superior to that of typical commercial room temperature single pixel terahertz detectors and capable of close to real time read‐out rates is presented. The detector is constructed via the integration of a metamaterial absorber and a micro‐bolometer sensor. An absorption magnitude of 57% at 2.5 THz, a minimum NEP of and a thermal time constant of 68 ms for the sensor are measured. As a demonstration of detector capability, it is employed in a practical Nipkow terahertz imaging system. The monolithic resonant terahertz detector is readily scaled to focal plane array formats by adding standard read‐out and addressing circuitry enabling compact, low‐cost terahertz imaging.

The length of the transit region of a Gunn diode determines the natural frequency at which it operates in fundamental mode—the shorter the device, the higher the frequency of operation. The long-held view on Gunn diode design is that for a functioning device the minimum length of the transit region is about 1.5 μm, limiting the devices to fundamental mode operation at frequencies of roughly 60 GHz. Study of these devices by more advanced Monte Carlo techniques that simulate the ballistic transport and electron-phonon interactions that govern device behaviour, offers a new lower bound of 0.5 μm, which is already being approached by the experimental evidence that has shown planar and vertical devices exhibiting Gunn operation at 600 nm and 700 nm, respectively. The paper presents results of the first ever THz submicron planar Gunn diode fabricated in In_0.53Ga_0.47As on an InP substrate, operating at a fundamental frequency above 300 GHz. Experimentally measured rf power of 28 μW was obtained from a 600 nm long × 120 μm wide device. At this new length, operation in fundamental mode at much higher frequencies becomes possible—the Monte Carlo model used predicts power output at frequencies over 300 GHz.

The microwave frequency band typically used for wireless communications will soon become saturated and will no longer be able to fulfill the high bandwidth demands of modern communication networks. Terahertz (THz) communication has appeared as a highly attractive, future-generation wireless technology that offers higher spectral bandwidth and, therefore, higher data rates. However, the full exploitation of THz technologies is contingent upon the availability of energy-efficient sources and devices. In this letter, we present a fabrication and measurement of a microscale planar inverted cone antenna array made of gold. Using an ungrounded coplanar waveguide (CPW) feed, the microfabricated structure provides a bandwidth of 37.9% with the resonant frequency of 0.925 THz. Given the cost of microfabrication is reduced substantially with rapid technological advancements, the results of this letter suggest that high-speed THz communications can be realized for wide-scale applications.

We present a new short-open-load-thru (SOLT) calibration method for on-wafer S-parameter measurements. The new calibration method is based on a 10-term error model which is a simplified version of the 16-term error model. Compared with the latter, the former ignores all signal leakages except the ones between the probes. Experimental results show that this is valid for modern vector network analyzers. The advantage of using this 10-term error model is that the exact values of all error terms can be obtained by using the same calibration standards as the conventional SOLT method. This avoids not only the singularity problem with approximate methods, such as least squares, but also the usage of additional calibration standards. In this paper, we first demonstrate how the 10-term error model is developed, and then, the experimental verification of the theory is given. Finally, a practical application of the error model using a 10-dB attenuator from 140 to 220 GHz is presented. Compared with the conventional SOLT calibration method without crosstalk corrections, the new method shows approximately 1-dB improvement in the transmission coefficients of the attenuator at 220 GHz.

This paper presents a strategy for achieving metrological traceability using vector network analyzers (VNAs) at submillimeter-wave frequencies (300 to 3000 GHz). The strategy includes the use of traceable calibration techniques designed for operation at these frequencies. Slight, but significant, physical differences between the waveguide line standards, used during calibration, are accommodated by applying a weighting technique to combine results using different calibration lines. Measurement uncertainty is assessed by analyzing replicate measurement data, to take account of the different waveguide interface interactions that occur when the line standards are connected to the VNA. The strategy is illustrated using measurements made in the WM-250 (750 GHz to 1100 GHz) waveguide band.