Corrugated waveguide slow-wave structure for THz travelling wave tube

THz applications require sources and amplifiers compact, lightweight and powerful. Vacuum electron devices are the candidate solution. Among others, the corrugated waveguide slow-wave structure seems particularly suitable for traveling wave tubes in the THz region. THz vacuum electron devices require high precision technological processes with high aspect ratio such as SU-8 process. However, fabrication tolerances could highly affect the overall performances. Therefore a statistical analysis is fundamental for a reliable design. In this summary it is proposed a method based on an analytical model of the corrugated waveguide together with the Pierce theory, to fastly compute the gain of corrugated waveguide vacuum traveling wave tubes. The method is validated by three-dimensional electromagnetic softwares, both for cold and hot parameters. The proved accuracy and fast computation time make the model suitable for performing the sensitivity analysis of the corrugated waveguide vacuum tube to be realized by SU-8 technology process.