- MIT Terahertz Integrated Electronics

Eunseok Lee presented his paper on the world’s first THz wake-up receiver chip, on IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). Pushing the operation frequency of wake-up receiver to hundreds of GHz allows for millimeter-sized IoT systems. This minuscule device consumes micro-watt level power, and equips with lightweight cryptography. We demonstrated that it can be “waken-up” at 8-meter distance and pairs with our recent electronic THz beam former.

See MIT News article about more details of this work.

We present two papers on the 2022 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) on (1) electrical THz pencil beam forming and steering, and (2) 140GHz mono static radar without intrinsic 6dB loss associated with conventional couplers. See the two ISSCC Demo videos below. The team is quickly expanding the technology portfolio on high resolution (sub)-THz imaging! Also see a MIT News article here.

Congratulations to the first authors of the papers, Nathan Monroe and Xibi Chen, as well as all other team members!

Jack Holloway has successfully passed his Ph.D. dissertation defense. Jack is the very first Ph.D. member of our group, and has been working on ultra-high-speed wireline link using the transmission of THz wave inside a dielectric waveguide. Jack was in fact a part-time student (he has been leading research & development in Office of Naval Research and Raytheon at the same time). Yet, his Ph.D. study is still highly productive, with publications on ISSCC, IEDM, IEEE T-MTT and Microwave Magazine.

Congratulations to Jack for all these accomplishments!

Over the past one month, we have three papers that are accepted to the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), the top journal for integrated circuit design. Find them in the Publication page, about our work on (1) an ultra-broadband (100GHz) THz comb radar, (2) salt-grain-size RFID using sub-THz carrier, and (3) the second-generation chip-scale molecular clock.

Congratulations to the three teams, especially the leading authors Xiang Yi, Muhammed Khan and Cheng Wang!

Update (09/19/2020): our 4th manuscript, on a CMOS NV-center quantum magnetometer, is also accepted to the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC). Congratulations to Mohamed Ibrahim and our collaborators Chris Foy and Dirk Englund!

Zhi Hu successfully defended his dissertation (Title: Large-Scale High-Density Terahertz Radiator and Receiver Arrays on Silicon Chips) and also won the 2020 MIT MTL (Microsystem Technology Labs) Director’s Dissertation Award. Our group has won this prestigious award twice in a row. Congratulations to Zhi! (To see the video record of Zhi’s talk, click here)

(Left: Zhi being virtually presented the award by MTL director Prof. Harry Lee, Right: Zhi’s 1-THz 330-radiator array using IHP SiGe process, which generates a measured total radiated power of 240μW.)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and MIT held a two-day workshop on security in RF/analog microelectronics and electromagnetics at Washington, D.C. This invitation-only event explores the needs and challenges involved in ensuring security in future analog hardware operating at DC to terahertz (THz) frequencies. The workshop invited over 70 leading experts from academia, industry, and government with expertise in microelectronics, materials, wireless systems, internet-of-things (IoT), multifunction RF, and array signal processing. Prof. Ruonan Han is the chair of the workshop. The co-chairs of the workshop are Prof. Vanessa Chen from Carnegie Mellon University and Prof. Jeffrey Nanzer from Michigan State University. The workshop is sponsored by Dr. Jenshan Lin, NSF Program Director in Engineering Directorate, Division of Electrical, Communications & Cyber Systems (ENG/ECCS). Details of the workshop can be found here: https://www-mtl.mit.edu/wpmu/nsfworkshop2019/

After the chip-scale THz molecular clock work, the MIT THz Integrated Electronics Group will publish another paper on Nature Electronics! In collaboration with Prof. D. Englund’s group at MIT, we report a room-temperature CMOS quantum magnetometer using nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. This opens up great opportunities in building low-cost, miniature quantum sensors with high performance. MIT students D. Kim, M. Ibrahim (our group member) and C. Foy equally contributed to this work.

Ruonan Han has received the 2018 Intel Outstanding Researcher Award in Systems Integration Sector. This award, presented by Gilroy Vandentop, Director of Intel Corporate University Research, and Mike Mayberry, Intel Corporate Technology Officer, recognizes our group’s significant progress on sub-THz transceiver for ultra-broadband wireline communications. Prof. Han’s collaborator at Intel is Dr. Georgios C. Dogiamis at Intel Component Research, Chandler, AZ.

Ruonan is one of the four recipients of such awards this year. The other recipients are Sharad Malik of Princeton University, Fred Chong of the University of Chicago, and Diego Klabjan of Northwestern University.

A new paper on molecular clock–a new approach towards low-cost miniaturized frequency reference with atomic-clock-grade stability, is published on Nature Electronics today. This paper describes the fundamental physics of the clock, experimental data of the reference molecules (carbonyl sulfide), two prototypes (both at lab-scale and chip-scale), as well as the stability analysis and measurements. Congratulations to Cheng Wang and other members (James Mawdsley, Mina Kim, Y. Xiang and Zihan Wang) of the molecular clock team!

Update (7/16/2018): The paper features on the cover of the journal’s July issue, and the homepage of www.mit.edu.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has granted the Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group at MIT an award in support of our work on CMOS-based THz molecular clock. In this project, novel interdisciplinary approaches combining the unique feature of molecular rotation and state-of-the-art circuit/architecture will be applied in order to achieve enhanced stability and energy efficiency. We thank NSF for funds supporting this project and our early exploratory efforts on chip-scale wave-matter interactions.

Prof. Ruonan Han will deliver a keynote speech at the 2019 German Microwave Conference (GeMiC) in Stuttgart, March 25, 2019. He will also give invited talks in the following conferences:

IEEE Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Symposium (Philadelphia, PA, June 2018)
Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium (Toyoma, Japan, PIERS, August 2018)
IEEE European Microwave Symposium (Madrid, Spain, September 2018)
IEEE International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology (ICSICT, Qingdao, China, Nov. 2018)
IEEE Topical Meetings on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems (SiRF, Orlando, FL, Jan. 2019).

Two of our recent works on chip-scale wave-matter interactions will be presented on IEEE VLSI Circuit Symposium in Honolulu, HI. Mohamed Ibrahim will demonstrate, for the first time, optically-detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond using a CMOS chip. In collaborating with Prof. D. Englund’s group at MIT, we aim to significantly reduce the cost and form factor of quantum sensors for magnetometry. For the second work, Cheng Wang invents an “atomic clock on CMOS chip” using a low power and compact sub-THz spectrometer. This new frequency reference provides a long-term stability that is orders of magnitude higher than quartz-crystal oscillators. This work is also selected as the technical highlight of the conference.

Zhi Hu’s paper on a large-scale 1-THz radiator array in SiGe won the best student paper award (2nd-place) at the 2017 IEEE Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Symposium. Using innovations at device and electromagnetic levels, this work achieves record total radiated power (0.1mW) in mid-THz range among all silicon electronic chips. In particular, up to 91 coherent active radiators are integrated within only 1mm² die area. The award was presented by the RFIC TPC Chair, Dr. Kevin Kobayashi. Congratulations to Zhi!