Progress Toward Corrugated Feed Horn Arrays in Silicon

Published

December 16, 2009

Author(s)

Joseph W. Britton, Ki W. Yoon, James A. Beall, Daniel T. Becker, Hsiao-Mei Cho, Gene C. Hilton, Michael D. Niemack, Kent D. Irwin

Abstract

We are developing monolithic arrays of corrugated feed horns fabricated in silicon for dual-polarization single mode operation at 90, 145 and 220 GHz. The arrays consist of hundreds of platelet feed horns assembled from gold coated stacks of micromachined silicon wafers. As a first step, Au coated Si waveguides with a circular, corrugated cross section were fabricated; their attenuation was measured to be <0.15 from dB/cm 80 to 110 GHz at room temperature. To ease the manufacture of horn arrays, electrolytic deposition of Au on degenerate Si without a metal seed layer was demonstrated. An apparatus for measuring the radiation pattern, optical efficiency, and spectral band pass of prototype horns is described. Feed horn arrays made of silicon may find use in polarization anisotropy measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Proceedings Title

unknown

Volume

1185

Conference Dates

July 20-24, 2009

Conference Location

Palo Alto, CA

Conference Title

Low Temperature Devices 13

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

mm-wave optics, cryoelectronics, experimental cosmology, optics

Citation

Britton, J. , Yoon, K. , Beall, J. , Becker, D. , Cho, H. , Hilton, G. , Niemack, M. and Irwin, K. (2009), Progress Toward Corrugated Feed Horn Arrays in Silicon, unknown, Palo Alto, CA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=903191 (Accessed October 27, 2025)