2016 International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APSYM)

Design of a Gain Enhanced THz Bow-Tie

Photoconductive Antenna
Jyothi AKB, Chinmoy Saha, Basudeb Ghosh Rajeev Kini, Vaisakh CP
Department of Avionics Department of Physics
Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Indian Institute of Science Education and Research
Thiruvananthapuram, India Thiruvananthapuram, India
sulakhejyoti@gmail.com, csaha@ieee.org rajeevkini@iisertvm.ac.in

Abstract—This paper presents design of a high gain

conventional bow-tie photoconductive antenna in the THz
frequency band. Simulation results of the proposed
antenna are presented in this paper. The paper also deals
with the effect of silicon lens on the antenna radiation
pattern which enhances the directivity of the antenna by a
considerable amount

Keywords— Photoconductive antenna, bow-tie antenna, Si lens

and Si-GaAs substrate

I. INTRODUCTION
Terahertz (THz) band covering frequencies from 0.1 to 10
THz in the electromagnetic spectrum has been at the centre of
attraction in recent years due to its unique properties [1-3] and
diversified uses in various applications like security screening,
spectroscopy application for material characterization, bio-
sensing, high data rate indoor communication and non-
invasive imaging. For spectroscopy application,
photoconductive antennas (PCA) are used for generation, as
well as, for the detection of THz signal. Usually, dipole
antenna is used as THz source and bowtie antenna is preferred
as THz detector. Both substrate material and antenna design
play a major role in improving the overall performance of the
PCA [4]. This paper mainly focuses on the design of bow-tie
shaped THz photoconductive antenna with enhanced gain. A
silicon lens is used to enhance the directivity of the
photoconductive antenna. Detailed study in material selection
and subsequently, input reflection coefficient and the radiation
characteristics of the antenna is studied.
II. THZ PCA WORKING PRINCIPLE
The PCA is different from the conventional antenna
mainly because of its excitation mechanism. The three major
parameters for a PCA are, (i) the choice of the substrate with
desired carrier mobility and minority carrier lifetime, (ii)
photoconductive gap and (iii) bias electrode. The substrate
plays an important role in the performance of the antenna. The
substrates with low carrier life time, high break down voltage
and high dark resistivity are preferred for the design of the
photoconductive antenna. Based on this criterion, LT GaAs is
the preferable substrate. However, due to non-availability of
the substrate for fabrication, the study was restricted to GaAs.
The PCA gap is a function of laser pulse width and has impact
Fig. 1. Schematic of a generalized photoconductive THz antenna. PCA
electrodes is printed on a GaAs substrate and biased with DC supply voltage
V. The antenna is excited by an incident femto-second laser pulse.
on the magnitude of the generated photo current [5]. As the
THz peak power decreases with increased gap size, an
optimum photoconductive gap of 5μm is used for the present
study. In THz PCA, ohmic contact is used for bias electrode,
through which DC bias signal is applied. DC bias lines are
attached to both the arms of dipole antenna. Preferred material
for antenna electrodes and bias line is TiAu /AuGe / AuCr [6].
When the femtosecond laser pulse is illuminates on PCA
gap, as illustrated in Fig. 1, the carriers are generated, which
passes through the substrate and accelerated by the applied DC
bias. As the carrier life time of the substrate is tuned to sub-
picoseconds, they exist for shorter duration, which leads to the
transient currents that in turn leads to desired THz signal.
III. ANTENNA DESIGN AND RESULTS
Bow-tie antenna [7] is a widely used wideband antenna
and it is designed to operate from 0.3THz to 2THz. As
spectroscopy covers the wider spectrum, it needs to have a
wide band antenna for THz detection. Fig. 2 (a) shows the
schematic of the proposed bow-tie shaped THz
photoconductive antenna. The antenna electrodes are patterned
over GaAs substrate (εr=12.9) of thickness 100 µm. The
geometrical parameters of the antenna are shown in Table 1.
As it will be demonstrated, the directivity of the proposed

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 2016 International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APSYM)

TABLE-I
Design Parameters of the proposed THz Bow-tie PCA
PCA Substrate: LT-GaAs: r = 12.9
Si lens: r = 11.7
PCA metallization: Gold with 0.36 m thickness
Parameter l w1 w2 h Met. sx
Thickness
Value (m ) 180 10 45 90 0.36 1200
Parameter sy g bw TGaAS Tex R
Value (m ) 1200 5 10 100 25 500

Fig. 3. Simulated S11 characteristics of the proposed bow-tie shaped THz

PCA.
In order to improve the directivity of the antenna, a
hemispherical lens of 500m diameter, made up of Si is used.
The choice of Si lens is more appropriate due to its refractive
index and it is transparent to THz radiation. Due to space
limitations, the detailed analysis of the Si lens is not presented
here, however, [9] provides the same in details. Fig. 5 shows
the radiation pattern with the Si lens. As compared to Fig. 4, it
is evident that the radiated power of the Si-lens loaded bow-tie

Fig. 2. Schematic of the proposed bow-tie shaped THz PCA antenna (a)
without Si-lens mounting (top view; x-y plane) (b) with Si-lens mounting
(cross-sectional view: x-z plane).
antenna is quite low. The directivity can be substantially
enhanced by mounting a silicon lens over the antenna as
depicted in Fig. 2(b). The simulation of the proposed antenna
was carried out in CST Microwave Studio [8]. Fig. 3 shows
the variation of the input reflection coefficient of the proposed Fig. 4. Three-dimensional radiation pattern of the proposed antenna. The
antenna which indicates more than 200 GHz impedance radiated power of the antenna is not highly directive resulting in a lower
bandwidth spanning from 1 to 1.2 THz. It must be noted here maximum directivity of 4.25 dBi.
that the antenna was excited by a voltage source in the antenna is highly directive which results in an increased peak
simulation setup. The three dimensional radiation pattern of directivity of 10.85 dBi.
the proposed antenna without Si lens is shown in Fig. 4. It is
evident from the radiation pattern that the antenna is not very IV. CONCLUSION
directive and the maximum directivity of the antenna is around In this paper, preliminary simulation results for a wideband
4.25 dBi. conventional bow-tie THz photoconductive antenna are

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 2016 International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APSYM)

presented. The antenna is shown to offer a good impedance [9] www.batop/THz component/Si lens.
bandwidth over the frequency of interest. However, it was
found that the basic bow-tie antenna suffers from its low

Fig. 5. Three-dimensional radiation pattern of the proposed antenna with

Si-lens. The radiated power of the antenna is highly directive resulting in
maximum directivity of 10.85 dBi.

directivity and the use of Si lens increases the directivity of the

photoconductive antenna by 6.5 dB. The fabrication of the
proposed antenna is under process and the measured PCA
characteristics will be presented during the conference.
REFERENCES
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no.40, 2004.
[2] Pawar, Ashish Y,et al. "Terahertz technology and its applications.",
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[3] Sungil Kim, Seung-Ho Ahn and Seong Su Park,"Design and Experiment
Results of High Speed Wireless Link Using Sub-terahertz Wave
Generated by Photonics-Based Technology," ETRI Journal, Vol. 35, no
4, 2013.
[4] Moon,Kiwon, et al. "Generation and Detection of Terahertz Waves
Using Low-Temperature-Grown GaAs with an Annealing Process",
ETRI Journal, Vol. 36, no. 1, February 2014.
[5] Huang, Neda Khiabani, Yaochun Shen "Terahertz Photoconductive
Antenna Efficiency," IEEE Antenna conference, 2011.
[6] Wei Shi, Lei Hou, and Xinmei Wang " High effective terahertz radiation
from semi-insulating-GaAs photoconductive antennas with ohmic
contact electrodes" Journal of applied physics, vol 10, 2011
[7] Ning Zhu and Richard Ziolkowski, "Photoconductive THz Antenna
Designs With High Radiation Efficiency, High Directivity, and High
Aperture Efficiency," IEEE transactions on terahertz science and
technology, vol. 3, no. 6, 2013.
[8] CST Microwave Studio, V.15, CST Corp

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