Compact submillimeter-wave receivers made with semiconductor nano-fabrication technologies

Author

Jung, C. ; Thomas, B. ; Lee, C. ; Peralta, A. ; Gill, J. ; Cooper, K. ; Chattopadhyay, G. ; Schlecht, E. ; Lin, R. ; Mehdi, I.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

5-10 June 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

Advanced semiconductor nanofabrication techniques are utilized to design, fabricate and demonstrate a super-compact, low-mass (<;10 grams) submillimeter-wave heterodyne front-end. RF elements such as waveguides and channels are fabricated in a silicon wafer substrate using deep-reactive ion etching (DRIE). Etched patterns with sidewalls angles controlled with 1° precision are reported, while maintaining a surface roughness of better than 20 nm rms for the etched structures. This approach is being developed to build compact 2-D imaging arrays in the THz frequency range.

Keywords

nanofabrication; sputter etching; submillimetre wave receivers; surface roughness; 2D imaging array; DRIE; RF elements; THz frequency range; compact submillimeter-wave receivers; deep- reactive ion etching; semiconductor nanofabrication technology; silicon wafer substrate; surface roughness; Etching; Receivers; Rough surfaces; Silicon; Surface roughness; Surface waves; Silicon micromachining; deep-reactive ion etching; nanotechnologies; super-compact receiver front-ends; surface roughness;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2011 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MD

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-754-2

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2011.5972898

Filename

5972898