Solid-state THz Amplifier Breaking Records

CTL has demonstrated a state-of-the-art amplifier breaking records in terms of small-signal gain and bandwidth. Amplifiers play a key role in enabling new mmWave and terahertz instrumentation. The development of novel broadband sources and synthesizers grandly relies on our ability to amplify signals over enormous bandwidths.  High-gain amplifiers will enable a large amplitude control of the source at the system level while ultra-wideband performance will facilitate the integration of the circuit, relax the system complexity, and allow the transfer of complex signals.  A minimum gain of 19 dB was achieved from 325 GHz to 477 GHz. This performance was achieved with a 130 nm indium-phosphide technology from Teledyne’s foundry.  The paper entitled “Collector Series-Resistor to Stabilize a Broadband 400 GHz Common-Base Amplifier”, depicting the circuit design methodology and the measurement results, was published on October 14^th, 2021 in the IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology journal.

This work was presented on December 8^th, 2021 in the BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (BCICTS).