Ultra-compact on-chip spoof surface plasmon polariton transmission lines with enhanced field confinements

Abstract

On-chip transmission lines (TLs) for spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPPs) have been proved to suppress on-chip channel crosstalk in terahertz band due to their field confinement property. But the contradiction between strong field confinement and miniaturization limits the application of the on-chip SSPP TLs in millimeter and terahertz bands. Here, an ultra-compact on-chip SSPP TL with strong field confinement is proposed using 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The proposed SSPP TL reduces the cutoff frequency down to 435 GHz in a very limited TL width. Broadband feeding without using gradient transition structures is presented to guarantee the compact size. Compared to microstrip and the typical SSPP TLs, outstanding field confinement of the novel on-chip SSPP TL is demonstrated by the electrical-field- intensity distributions. Measured result matches to simulated one well. It is shown that the proposed on-chip SSPP TL possesses the lowest cutoff frequency and the smallest width relative to the cutoff wavelength, compared to the microstrip and the typical SSPP TLs. Thus the ultra-compact on-chip SSPP TL with strong field confinement may be widely used in the future miniaturized monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs).

Compact Muti-Frequency Band-Pass Filters Based on High-Order Mode of Folded Line Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Waveguide

“…The measurement results are in good agreement with the simulated ones, verifying the feasibility of the structure. Compared with previous studies on work [20]- [25], [28]- [33], the proposed filters have the advantages of compact structure, wide stopband, and multiple unwanted spectra are suppressed by notch band.…”

A Compact Coplanar Waveguide Spoof Surface Plasmon Polariton with Enhanced Field Confinements

“…The transformers represent the electromagnetic coupling between the etched groove structures and the CPW line. Obviously, the unloaded SSPP corresponds to the case that C = 0 [10]. In the E.C model, voltage and current on both sides of N th unit cell (V n , I n , V n+1 , I n+1 ) can be connected by transfer matrix which is also called ABCD matrix as follows:…”

“…Capacitive loading techniques are utilized in [8,9] to manipulate the dispersion characteristics and enhance field confinement. In [10], an onchip SSPP TL with reduced size and ultra-strong field confinement using 0.18 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology is proposed. However, relatively complicated mode-conversion structures are still required to convert guided waves to SSPP wave [7][8][9][10], increasing transversal width largely.…”

“…In [10], an onchip SSPP TL with reduced size and ultra-strong field confinement using 0.18 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology is proposed. However, relatively complicated mode-conversion structures are still required to convert guided waves to SSPP wave [7][8][9][10], increasing transversal width largely. In [11][12][13], three advanced SSPPs with enhanced field confinement are reported.…”

Electromagnetic compatibility technologies based on multi-functional spoof surface plasmon polariton channels

“…As surface waves that mimic optical surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in the microwave frequency, spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) [10][11][12][13] have advantages such as field confinement [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], field enhancement [20], and dispersion engineering [12,[21][22][23][24][25], which have been widely used in ultra-thin transmission lines (TLs) [10,[26][27][28][29][30], frequency splitter [31], coupler [32], amplifier [33][34][35], frequency multiplier [36][37][38], and communication systems [39,40]. Based on the field confinement property of SSPPs, crosstalk and signal integrity problems in array transmission can be solved to a certain extent [14][15][16], which provides a new method to improve the EMC performance of microwave circuits and systems.…”