First Demonstration of an All-Solid-State Room Temperature 2-THz Front End Viable for Space Applications

First Demonstration of an All-Solid-State Room Temperature 2-THz Front End Viable for Space Applications

Abstract

This article presents the first demonstration of an all-solid-state room temperature 2 THz Schottky diode receiver front end. Double sideband sensitivity (DSB) below 8000K is achieved that is suitable for atomic oxygen detection at 100-200 km altitude and other potential space applications on resource-constrained platforms. The design features a subharmonically pumped mixer with extensively optimized Schottky diodes mounted on a GaAs membrane and suspended on a split-waveguide mixer block. Triplers applied in the LO chain multiply a 38 GHz LO to 1 THz for the mixer with an astounding 5% final stage tripler efficiency. DSB below 7000K is envisioned in future work.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10615228