Search Results (4)

This paper proposes two types of electro-refractive optical modulator structures as a fully CMOS-compatible alternative solution. These modulators leverage the properties of amorphous (top) and crystalline (bottom) silicon films surrounding silicon nitride waveguides operating in the C-band communications range at a wavelength of 1550 nm. Various structures have been demonstrated and explored to compete with or surpass the current state-of-the-art performance of thermal tuners, the most widely used tuning mechanism in silicon nitride integrated photonics. Designs utilizing vertical and lateral p–n junctions with amorphous or crystalline films have been simulated and proposed. For the lateral p–n junctions, modulator lengths to achieve a $\pi$ phase shift smaller than 287 μm have been demonstrated for the TE mode and that smaller than 1937 μm for the TM mode, reaching 168 μm in the case of a lateral p–n junction that is completely a p-doped region over or under the waveguide for TE, and 1107 μm for TM. Power consumption is higher for the TM modes than for the TE, being in the order of 100 mW for the former and lower than 23 mW for the latter. The modulators exhibit higher losses for amorphous material compared to crystalline, with losses smaller than 10.21 dB and 3.2 dB, respectively. The vertical p–n junctions present a larger footprint than the lateral ones, 5.03 mm for TE and 38.75 mm for TM, with losses lower than 3.16 dB and 3.95 dB, respectively, for the crystalline silicon. Also, their power consumption is on the order of 21 mW for TE and 164 mW for TM. Full article

A novel method, which combines a multiple-beam extended interaction oscillator (EIO) with pseudospark-sourced (PS) sheet electron beams, is applied to generate high-power terahertz sources. For a multiple-beam EIO, the beam cross-section is significantly improved by replacing the commonly used pencil electron beams with sheet electron beams. The PS electron beams have the advantage of high current density and operate without a focus magnetic field. The volume of the cavity is larger when the EIO operates in the TM₃₁-3π mode than in the conventional TM₀₁-2π mode at the same operating frequency. The EIO operating at the terahertz frequency has a larger cavity volume, which means greater power capacity and lower manufacturing difficulty. For a PS multiple-beam EIO, the non-uniformity of electron beam currents is a common problem. In order to study this problem, an original high-order mode EIO driven by PS multiple sheet electron beams is presented with enhanced output power at 0.35 THz. The authors analyze electron beams with different currents through particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Simulation results show that the EIO can operate stably even in the case of non-uniform PS electron beam currents. When each current is 1.4 A, simulation results show the EIO’s output power of 4.9 kW at 0.35 THz. Considering the low conductivity of 1.1 × 10⁷ S/m, the efficiency is still 1.42%. Full article

This paper presents the first design that combines pseudospark-sourced (PS) electron beams with a multiple-beam extended interaction oscillator (EIO). The PS electron beam is an excellent choice for driving EIOs because it has high current density and does not require a focusing magnetic field. The EIO with coaxial structure adopts the method of multiple electron beams, which plays a crucial role in improving the average output power. At the same frequency, the EIO operating in the high-order TM₃₁-3π mode has a larger cavity size than the EIO operating in the traditional TM₀₁-2π mode. The high-order TM₃₁-3π mode solves the problem of the EIO’s manufacture at high frequency. In order to verify the above points, a G-band PS multiple-beam EIO operating in TM₃₁-3π mode has been designed. The beam–wave interaction particle-in-cell simulation results show that the EIO’s peak output power is 39.2 kW at 217 GHz, and that its efficiency is around 6.1%. The EIO with six pencil beams operates at a voltage of 43 kV. The total current of the six electron beams is 15 A (equally distributed among the six beams), and the corresponding current density is about 5000 A/cm². Considering the ohmic loss and the effect of skin depth, the conductivity used in these simulations is 2 × 10⁷ S/m. The design is an excellent way to improve the output power of EIO operating at high frequency. Full article

In this paper, we propose a high-order mode sheet beam extended interaction klystron (EIK) operating at G-band. Through the study of electric field distribution, we choose TM₃₁ 2π mode as the operating mode. The eigenmode simulation shows that the resonant frequency of the modes adjacent to the operating mode is far away from the central frequency, so there is almost no mode competition in our high mode EIK. In addition, by studying the sensitivity of the related geometry parameters, we conclude that the height of the coupling cavity has a great influence on the effective characteristic impedance, and the width of the gap mainly affects the working frequency. Therefore, it is necessary to strictly control the fabrication tolerance within 2 μm. Finally, the RF circuit using six barbell multi-gap cavities is determined, with five gaps for the input cavity and idler cavities and seven gaps for the output cavity. To expand the bandwidth, the stagger tuning method is adopted. Under the conditions of a voltage of 16.5 kV, current of 0.5 A and input power of 0.2 W, the peak output power of 650 W and a 3-dB bandwidth of 700 MHz are achieved without any self-oscillation. Full article