Sandia Corporation

The City University of New York

Gregory Conrad Dyer

Eric A Shaner

Gregory Aizin

John L Reno

An electrically tunable terahertz two-path plasmonic interferometer with an integrated detection element can down convert a terahertz field to a rectified DC signal. The integrated detector utilizes a resonant plasmonic homodyne mixing mechanism that measures the component of the plasma waves in-phase with an excitation field that functions as the local oscillator in the mixer. The plasmonic interferometer comprises two independently tuned electrical paths. The plasmonic interferometer enables a spectrometer-on-a-chip where the tuning of electrical path length plays an analogous role to that of physical path length in macroscopic Fourier transform interferometers.

Two-path plasmonic interferometer with integrated detector

A tunable plasmonic crystal comprises several periods in a two-dimensional electron or hole gas plasmonic medium that is both extremely subwavelength (&#x2dc;&#x3bb;/100) and tunable through the application of voltages to metal electrodes. Tuning of the plasmonic crystal band edges can be realized in materials such as semiconductors and graphene to actively control the plasmonic crystal dispersion in the terahertz and infrared spectral regions. The tunable plasmonic crystal provides a useful degree of freedom for applications in slow light devices, voltage-tunable waveguides, filters, ultra-sensitive direct and heterodyne THz detectors, and THz oscillators.

Growing community of inventors

Albuquerque, NM, United States of America

Gregory Conrad Dyer