Ricerc@Sapienza

We present a new solid state rectifier, compatible with CMOS integrated circuit, suitable to direct conversion of terahertz radiation, at room temperature. The structure creates a rectenna, consists in a truncated conical helix extruded from a planar spiral and connected to a nanometric metallic whisker at one of its edges. The whisker reaches the gate of a MOS-FET transistor. Rectification can be obtained by the self-mixing effect occurring into the plasma waves generate underneath the gate. The proposed solution is easy to integrate with existing imaging systems.

We present a new CMOS compatible direct conversion terahertz detector operating at room temperature. The rectenna consists of an integrated antenna, realized on the surface of the integrated circuit and connected to a nanometric metallic whisker at one of its edges. The whisker reaches the semiconductor substrate that constitutes the antenna ground plane. The rectifying device can be obtained introducing some simple modifications of the charge storage well in conventional CMOS APS devices, making the proposed solution easy to integrate with existing imaging systems.