Wideband and fast THz spectrometer using dual-frequency-comb on CMOS

Millimeter-wave/terahertz rotational spectroscopy of polar gaseous molecules provides a powerful tool for complicated gas mixture analysis. Here, a 220-to-320 GHz dual-frequency-comb spectrometer in 65-nm bulk CMOS is presented, along with a systematic analysis on fundamental issues of rotational spectrometer, including the impacts of various noise mechanisms, gas cell, molecular properties, detection sensitivity, etc. The spectrometer utilizes two counter-propagating frequency-comb signals to seamlessly scan the broadband spectrum. The comb signal, with 10 equally-spaced frequency tones, is generated and detected by a chain of inter-locked transceivers on chip. Each transceiver is based on a multi-functional electromagnetic structure, which serves as frequency doubler, sub-harmonic mixer and on-chip radiator simultaneously. In particular, theory and design methodology of a dual transmission line feedback scheme are presented, which maximizes the transistor gain near its cut-off frequency fmax. The dual-frequency-comb scheme does not only improve the scanning speed by 20 x, but also reduces the overall energy consumption to 90 mJ/point with 1 Hz bandwidth (or 0.5 s integration time). With its channelized 100-GHz scanning range and sub-kHz specificity, wide range of molecules can be detected. In the measurements, state-of-the-art total radiated power of 5.2 mW and single sideband noise figure (NF) of 14.6~19.5 dB are achieved, which further boost the scanning speed and sensitivity. Lastly, spectroscopic measurements for carbonyl sulfide (OCS) and acetonitrile (CH3CN) are presented. With a path length of 70 cm and 1 Hz bandwidth, the measured minimum detectable absorption coefficient reaches [alpha] gas,min=7 .2 x 10-7 cm- 1 . For OCS, that enables a minimum detectable concentration of 11 ppm. The predicted sensitivity for some other molecules reaches ppm level (e.g. 3 ppm for hydrogen cyanide (HCN)), or 10 ppt level if gas pre-concentration with a typical gain of 10 5 is used.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Cheng

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ruonan Han.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118025

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/118025