EAGER: Novel Highly Sensitive Detectors using Nanostructure Arrays for Advanced Electronics Systems

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

The project will explore the feasibility of novel highly sensitive detectors for advanced THz electronic systems using 2D and 3D gratings with nanometer feature sizes and implemented using deep submicron silicon technology. For the first time, a new configuration of plasma wave detector array elements with symmetrical sources and two symmetrical gate fingers will be implemented and a multi scale approach ensuring a plasmonic resonance with each element of the array and an electromagnetic resonance within the entire array will be used. If successful, this feasibility study will develop and validate a new pathway for the subwavelength coupling of THz radiation with the two dimensional electron gas or fluid in solid-state systems and will enable a new generation of THz electronics systems with revolutionary impact on the US airport security systems and biomedical applications. Principal Investigator will fabricate and characterize the FINFET detector prototypes and develop software tools for design and optimization of electronics systems using such detectors to prove the feasibility of this new approach. The project will explore the feasibility of new nanoscale FIN FET elements to form the THz detection units with optimum boundary conditions that have never been achieved before. These will be done by using opposing current flows in these four terminal detector units. The project will include investigation of the THz interaction with and coupling to these elements, study their sensitivity, noise, temperature dependencies, and Noise Equivalent Power. This will be done using three dimensional electromagnetic simulation and nanoscale THz imaging. The silicon FIN FET elements will be combined into nanostructured arrays to capture the entire THz beam to prove the feasibility of silicon based plasmonic THz technology. The intellectual merit of the proposed project will be in proving feasibility of multi scale nonlinear active nanostructure arrays with elements of new, previously unexplored type for solving fundamental scientific problems of THz radiation interaction with solid and biological matter at femtosecond time intervals and nanometer and atomic scales. The broader impact of the project will be in gaining understanding new fundamental physics of active nonlinear multi scale nanostructures enabling the development of THz electronics with orders of magnitude better performance at a fraction of the cost of existing systems; in seeding the development of new multibillion dollar THz electronics industry with applications in medicine, home land security, industrial controls, space exploration, and defense; in creating hundreds of thousands of new high-tech American jobs and in training the next generation of scientists and engineers through THz related new curriculum and outreach at all levels - from K to 12 to post graduate education. Principal Investigator will engage the REU undergraduate students and will give lectures and demonstrations in local high schools.