Nanophotonics-inspired all-silicon waveguide platforms for terahertz integrated systems

Abstract

Recent advances in silicon (Si) microphotonics have enabled novel devices for the terahertz (THz) range based on dielectric waveguides. In the past couple of years, dielectric waveguides have become commonplace for THz systems to mitigate issues in efficiency, size, and cost of integration and packaging using metal-based waveguides. Therefore, THz systems have progressively evolved from cumbersome collections of discreet components to THz-wave integrated circuits. This gradual transition of THz systems from numerous components to compact integrated circuits has been facilitated at each step by incredible advances in all-Si waveguides allowing low-loss, low dispersion, and single-mode waveguiding operation. As such, all-Si waveguides position themselves as highly efficient interconnects to realize THz integrated circuits and further large-scale integration in the THz range. This review article intends to reevaluate the evolution stages of THz integrated circuits and systems based on all-Si waveguides.

Sensitive and Robust Millimeter-Wave/Terahertz Photonic Crystal Chip for Biosensing Applications

“…Third, the PhC chip can be easily mass-produced from silicon to reduce costs. Furthermore, the silicon chip can be easily coupled with rectangular waveguides and has the potential to integrate with THz sources and detectors [26] which will reduce the measurement setup complexity and size. In future works, we will investigate the effect of the resonance difference on the interference and the sensitivity.…”

Terahertz link with orthogonal polarization over silicon dielectric waveguide

“…It comprises a waveguide core in a wire‐shape Si and an EM section composed of a Si slab perforated with an array of through‐holes. A high‐resistivity (>10 kΩcm) Si was employed to considerably lower both loss and dispersion [17]. The EM section of the waveguide was implemented by introducing an array of through‐holes in the Si slab.…”

“…However, the limitations of state‐of‐the‐art equipment limit the highest achievable transmission data rates in the THz region. This is because current systems and interconnects suffer from the limited available power of the signal generators and detector sensitivity [17]. However, future metaverse applications and high‐computational data centres will require even higher data rates [18].…”

Terahertz non-destructive testing of power generator bars with a dielectric waveguide antenna

“…In general, the aim is to provide strong guidance of the terahertz waves and at the same time keep radiative losses at an acceptable level. Various approaches exist [13][14][15], where the specific implementation of dielectric waveguides may, for example, be realized in the sense of hollow-core and porous-core fibers [16,17] or as solid dielectric materials, sometimes referred to as ribbons or dielectric rod waveguides or microwires [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] exploiting total internal reflection. Even the combination of dielectric rods with embedded substrate lenses has recently been investigated for integration with antenna emitters [25].…”