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

Summary form only given, as follows. Advanced semiconductor fabrication techniques are utilized to design, fabricate and demonstrate a supercompact submillimeter-wave heterodyne front-end. RF elements such as waveguides and channels are fabricated in a silicon substrate using deep-reactive ion etching. Etched patterns with sidewalls angles controlled with 1° precision are reported while maintaining a etched surface roughness of better than 20 nm rms. This approach is developed to build compact 2D arrays in the THz frequency range.