The Study of 0.34 THz Monolithically Integrated Fourth Subharmonic Mixer Using Planar Schottky Barrier Diode

Abstract

A planar Schottky barrier diode with the designed Schottky contact area of approximately 3 μm 2 is developed on gallium arsenide (GaAs) material. The measurements of the developed planar Schottky barrier diode indicate that the zero-biased junction capacitance C j0 is 11.0 fF, the parasitic series resistance R S is 3.0 Ω, and the cut off frequency f T is 4.8 THz. A monolithically integrated fourth subharmonic mixer with this diode operating at the radio frequency (RF) signal frequency of 0.34 THz with the chip area of 0.6 mm 2 is implemented. The intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth is from DC to 40 GHz. The local oscillator (LO) bandwidth is 37 GHz from 60 to 97 GHz. The RF bandwidth is determined by the bandwidth of the on chip antenna, which is 28 GHz from 322 to 350 GHz. The measurements of the mixer demonstrated a conversion loss of approximately 51 dB.

High-Tc Superconducting Josephson Junction Harmonic Mixers with Stub Tuners on Integrated Bowtie Antennas

“…The higher the number of harmonics, the lower the frequency and cost of the local oscillator (LO). Semiconductor-based THz heterodyne receivers, generally operating at room temperature, have been widely developed using Schottky barrier diodes [2], high-electron-mobility transistors [3], complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor [4] and silicon-germanium [5] technologies. However, the maximum harmonic number up to 20 is from the Schottky barrier diode produced by Virginia Diodes, Inc. (VDI) [6].…”

Design and Measurement of a 0.67 THz Biased Sub-Harmonic Mixer

“…The DSB noise temperature is lower than 1500 K and the DSB conversion loss is less than 10 dB at the frequency band. In addition, some similar unbiased sub-harmonic mixer designs can be found in Reference [7][8][9][10].…”

The effects of nonlinear thermal fluctuation and series junction array on high-T c superconducting terahertz mixer performance

“…Under appropriate dc biasing and LO pumping conditions, the RF signal can be downconverted to an intermediate-frequency (IF) signal by heterodyne mixing. Compared to the semiconductor receiver [22][23][24][25] and LTS receiver [26][27][28][29] technologies, such a coherent detection based on HTS Josephson junction offers the advantage of relatively high sensitivity in the THz band while featuring a small and inexpensive cryogenic system. However, due to the intrinsic low-impedance characteristics of single Josephson junction, impedance mismatching inevitably brings poor signal coupling and thus limits the further improvement of sensitivity or noise performance.…”

“…Under appropriate dc biasing and LO pumping conditions, the RF signal can be downconverted to an intermediate-frequency (IF) signal by heterodyne mixing. Compared to the semiconductor receiver[22][23][24][25] and LTS receiver[26][27][28][29] technologies, such a coherent detection based on HTS Josephson junction offers the advantage of relatively high sensitivity in the THz band while…”