TeraHertz focal-plane detection and imaging group
Staff
Leader: Péter Földesy, PhD
Researchers: Ákos Zarándy, PhD, Zsolt Benedek
PhD students: Domonkos Gergely, Zoltán Kárász, László Kozák, and several BSc and MSc students
Secretariat: Balogh Linda
Research topic and mission
The THz and mmWave electronics and imaging is a relatively novel field of the electronics. The classic CMOS technology is capable of detecting sub-THz radiation well above its cut-off frequency. The phenomena behind is the so-called electron plasmawave technology. Our mission is to combine our laboratory's and partner's focal-plane processor design and application background with this unique area.
To utilize its potential in material inspection and life sciences, we have built a laboratory environment and developed several characterization and imaging ASICs. We have created several variants in test chips, of which characterization serves for generalized model and optimization in collaboration Computational Fluid Dynamics and Material Scientists groups.
As a step further in imaging, we have designed a complex 90 nm technology chip including per pixel signal conversion and processing cores, which comes back from fab in the end of 2011Q2.
THz laboratory
The quasi optical setup below shows focusing case with fiber coupled laser positioning aid. The mmWave and the visible light is mixed with a proper dichronic mirror. The CW source's capabilities is illustrated as well.
The main sub-THz source is a VDI product includes a WR9.0 amplifier multiplier chain (AMC) with a YIG oscillator to drive it and several multipliers to extend into the WR4.3, WR2.8, and WR2.2 waveguide bands (80...500 GHz). The source is CW, has electronic modulation and attenuation.
The setup is mounted on an optical table with several positioners, off-axis mirrors, X-Z scanning table, connected to PCs by data acquision cards, etc.
Designs
A 180 nm UMC CMOS triple-well technology prototype of several test structures are designed and manufactured. Its responsibility is in the range of 20-30 V/W @ 400 GHz and about 20 mA/W for fsec pulsed radiation, but its distinguishing feature is the variety of formerly unpresented detector arrangements.
A 90 nm TSMC RFLP technology chip is under manufacturing, where a 24 sensors are placed in an array and each of them accompanied with ADC, lock-in amplification, and finally a strandard SPI protocol output. The system will be charaterized 2011Q3.
As a VLSI design team we run several other projects as well. A few from our latest designs:
- MITLL 3D process with 3 silicon layer, a true 3D technology. Complex navigation aid vision system on a chip.
- Vision chips with various capabilities based on Silicon and InGaAs detectors.
- Time-to-digital converter (student project) with about 30 psec resolution, based on two propagating binary wave collosion.
- Digital microfluidics for compressed sensing experiments. A digital microfluidics chip has been designed and manufactured in the MTA-MFA (it is covered by passivation and teflon hidrofobic layers). The motivation for this chip is that the image formation compressed sensing method requires masked light projection to the sensor(s). In exotic wavelength, like THz range, there is no real solution for this – apart from the trivial scanned mirrors. Using the digital microfluidics, droplets of absorbing and/or reflecting fluids can be circulated performing as radiation masking.
Infrastructure
- VDI CW sub-THz source + Ericsson Power meter
- Quasi optical setup – Thorlabs, Edmund optics, etc.
- DLP® DiscoveryTM 4000 Starter Kit Board .7 XGA (VIS), 1024 x 768 micro mirrors, 13.6 µm pitch
- Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Xilinx complete CAD tool flows
- Application server with project centric version control system
Partners
Pázmány Péter Catholic University – Faculty of Information Technology, http://itk.ppke.hu (Running courses: VLSI design theory and practice, Digital IC Design practice)
Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Interdisciplinary Technical Sciences Doctoral School http://www.en.itk.ppke.hu/doctoral_school/
CNM - Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, http://www.imse-cnm.csic.es
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science http://www.mfa.kfki.hu/
Budapest University of Technology and Economics: Department of Broadband Infocommunications and Electromagnetic Theory and Department of Fluid Mechanics http://hvt.bme.hu/
University of Pécs, Faculty of Science, Institute of Physics, http://physics.ttk.pte.hu/kezdolap/index.shtm
Supporting grants
The Hungarian R&D grant: KTIA-OTKA-77564 of 600 k$. We lead the consortium in which several Hungarian institutions are involved (PTE, MTA-MFA, BMGE). The goal is to develop a THz range imager including sensors, processing elements and imaging setup.
MTA-SzTAKI internal grant lead by Ákos Zarándy, goal: multispectral imaging system