Plasmonic Antenna Shines a Light on Terahertz Processors

IEEE Spectrum  August 6, 2018 To combine the advantages of ultrafast femtosecond nano-optics with an on-chip communication scheme, optical signals with a frequency of several hundreds of THz need to be down-converted to coherent electronic signals propagating on-chip. Researchers in Germany have demonstrated that 14 fs optical pulses in the near-infrared can drive electronic on-chip circuits with a prospective bandwidth up to 10 THz. The corresponding electronic pulses propagate in macroscopic striplines on a millimeter scale. They exploit femtosecond photoswitches based on asymmetric, nanoscale metal junctions to drive the pulses. The non-linear ultrafast response is based on a plasmonically enhanced, multiphoton […]