| NSF Org: |
ECCS Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | June 13, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 13, 2013 |
| Award Number: | 1305931 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
mahmoud fallahi
ECCS Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $360,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $360,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1109 GEDDES AVE STE 3300 ANN ARBOR MI US 48109-1015 (734)763-6438 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1301 Beal Avenue Ann Arbor MI US 48109-2122 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | EPMD-ElectrnPhoton&MagnDevices |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
The objective of this program is to develop a new generation of room-temperature terahertz spectrometers with significant bandwidth increase compared to existing technologies for advanced chemical sensing. For this purpose, a novel plasmonic heterodyne spectrometer concept will be investigated which replaces the terahertz local oscillator of traditional heterodyne receivers by a near infrared local oscillator with a terahertz envelope. Unique capabilities of plasmonic antennas are key in this innovation, which enable efficient coupling of the near infrared local oscillator and terahertz signal into the semiconductor nanostructures that are specifically designed to allow direct mixing of the local oscillator and terahertz signal.
The intellectual merit of the proposed work is an entirely new heterodyne terahertz spectrometer architecture that uses a near infrared local oscillator instead of the terahertz local oscillator employed in conventional heterodyne terahertz spectrometers. Near infrared local oscillators offer orders of magnitude higher power, wider frequency tunability, and narrower linewidth compared with terahertz local oscillators, leading to a significant improvement in spectrometer sensitivity, operation bandwidth and spectral resolution at room temperature. The broader impacts of the proposed research are developing high performance systems for biomedical sensing, pharmaceutical quality control, air pollution control, and security screening, as well as developing an education/outreach program for increasing the supply of terahertz engineers and scientists through new graduate and undergraduate courses, K12 activities, recruitment and retention of under-represented minorities.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
New generation of room-temperature heterodyne spectrometers were studied in this research program, which can significantly improve the spectral range and sensitivity of terahertz chemical sensors. Heterodyne terahertz spectrometers are highly in demand for various sensing applications including space explorations and astrophysics studies. A conventional heterodyne terahertz spectrometer consists of a terahertz mixer that mixes a received terahertz signal with a local oscillator signal to generate an intermediate frequency signal in the radio frequency (RF) range, where it can be easily processed and detected by RF electronics. Schottky diode mixers, superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixers and hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers are the most commonly used mixers in conventional heterodyne terahertz spectrometers. While conventional heterodyne terahertz spectrometers offer high spectral resolution and high detection sensitivity levels at cryogenic temperatures, their dynamic range and bandwidth are limited by the low radiation power of existing terahertz local oscillators and narrow bandwidth of existing terahertz mixers. To address these limitations, we studied a novel approach for heterodyne terahertz spectrometry based on plasmonic photomixing. The presented design replaces terahertz mixer and local oscillator of conventional heterodyne terahertz spectrometers with a plasmonic photomixer pumped by an optical local oscillator. The optical local oscillator consists of two wavelength-tunable continuous-wave optical sources with a terahertz frequency difference. As a result, the spectrometry bandwidth and dynamic range of the presented heterodyne spectrometer is not limited by the radiation frequency and power restrictions of conventional terahertz sources. Different prototypes of the presented terahertz spectrometer were developed during this research program, which were optimized for operation at various terahertz frequency ranges and significantly larger spectrometry bandwidths and dynamic ranges were demonstrated compared to existing room-temperature terahertz spectrometers.
Last Modified: 02/09/2017
Modified by: Mona Jarrahi
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