05/08/2024

Congratulations to Jinchen Wang on winning the 2024 Frederick C. Hennie III Teaching Award for Excellence in the department of EECS, MIT!

02/01/2024

Congratulations to Xibi Chen on winning the 2024 IEEE Microwave Theory & Technique Society Graduate Fellowship, as well as being awarded for the 2024 IEEE Microwave Theory & Technique Society Tom Brazil Graduate Fellowship!

11/08/2023

 

Eunseok Lee presented the invited talk of his THz wake-up receiver work at the 2023 IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC), Hainan, China.

11/07/2023

Eunseok Lee’s work on a packageless anti-tampering THz ID is accepted by the 2024 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Jinchen Wang’s work on a cryo-CMOS NV controller is accepted by the student research preview (SRP) at 2024 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

Congratulations to Eunseok and Jinchen!

08/09/2023

IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference 2020 :A-SSCC 2020

Eunseok Lee is invited to present his CICC talk on 2023 IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC), which will be held in Hainan, China.

04/24/2023

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.

02/22/2023

Jinchen Wang presented his THz cryogenic-classic data link work at the 2023 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). This work is a collaboration between our group, Prof. Dirk Englund and his student Issac Harris. See more on IEEE Spectrum and MIT News.

     

02/20/2023

Prof. Ruonan Han is presented the 2023 IEEE Solid-State Circuit Society New Frontier Award on the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

02/15/2023

Prof. Ruonan Han is appointed as the Director of MIT Center of Integrated Circuits and Systems (CICS).

Prof. Ruonan Han is appointed as the Undergraduate Laboratory Officer of the MIT EECS Department, and joins the Department Leadership Group (DLG). (see the MIT EECS News)

03/10/2022

Prof. Ruonan Han joins the Technical Program Committee of IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

02/19/2022

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!

01/29/2022

Congratulations to Muhammad Ibrahim Wasiq Khan on winning the 2022 IEEE Microwave Theory & Technique Society Graduate Fellowship!

05/01/2021

Prof. Ruonan Han is promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure (see MIT News).

03/04/2021

Our paper on a 310 GHz CMOS transceiver utilizing waves with orbital-angular momentum (OAM) is accepted to the IEEE Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit Symposium (RFIC). This is a collaboration with Prof. Ananthan Chandrakasan’s team at MIT.

Update: The paper wins the Best Student Paper Award (First Place) of the conference!

02/24/2021

Our THz dielectric waveguide link work, originally presented on ISSCC 2021, is reported on MIT Homepage and IEEE Spectrum.

12/23/2020

   

Congratulations to Mohamed Ibrahim on winning the 2021 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Predoctoral Achievement Award!

Updates (1/25/2021): Mohamed also is also awarded the 2021 IEEE Microwave Theory & Technique Society Graduate Fellowship.

11/24/2020

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!

11/01/2020

Jack Holloway’s paper on a 105Gbps THz dielectric waveguide link is accepted to the Intl. Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2021. Congratulations to Jack!

08/30/2020

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!

07/15/2020

Our group is now part of the NASA Strategic University Research Partnership (SURP) program, and will collaborate with the scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on an ultra-miniaturized, monolithic molecular clock on a silicon chip.

05/20/2020

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.)

   

02/23/2020

Our THz-ID work is reported by MIT Spotlight News on MIT’s homepage. This is a collaboration with Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan’s team. Using an on-chip 2×2 antenna array for 260GHz backscatter communication and beam steering, the CMOS THz-ID is only 1.6mm2 in size and does not rely external package component. Meanwhile, an ultra-low-power cryptographic processor is also integrated that further secures the transmission of sensitive data.

 

02/23/2020

Three new THz microsystems (cryptographic THz ID, THz-comb FMCW radar and chip-scale molecular clock) debuted at ISSCC. A live demo of the second-generation molecular clock was also given on the conference.

   

01/23/2020

Mina Kim presented at the Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Meeting held by the Institution of Navigation (ION) in San Diego, CA. We described our collaboration with JPL NASA, aiming at a THz molecular-clock architecture for deep space inter-smallsat radio occultation.

01/10/2020

Prof. Ruonan Han is now an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering.

12/16/2019

Congratulations to Cheng Wang on winning both the 2019 MIT MTL Doctoral Dissertation Award! Check out his talk given at the 2019 MTL Seminar Series on the right.

In addition, Cheng also won the 2020 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Predoctoral Achievement Award!

 

10/28/2019

Cheng Wang successfully passed his Ph.D. defense today. Cheng came to MIT in 2015 and joined our group. During the past four years, he investigated into chip-scale rotational spectrometers and molecular clocks. His research results have been reported on 2 ISSCC, 1 IEDM and 1 Nature Electronics papers, along with his many other publications. Prof. Hae-Seung (Harry) Lee and Prof. Qing Hu served on Cheng’s thesis committee.

Congratulations to Dr. Cheng!

        

10/24/2019

Ruonan Han joins the advisory board of Cell Reports Physical Science of Cell Press: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/editorial-board

10/18/2019

3 papers exploring various CMOS-based THz microsystems are accepted to the Intl. Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2020. Check the paper details here. Congratulations to all the authors!

10/18/2019

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/

09/25/2019

The research work on CMOS-NV quantum sensing is reported by MIT News today.

09/24/2019

The group will collaborate with the scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to develop THz molecular clock for deep space applications.

09/10/2019

Prof. Ruonan Han is selected as one of the three Distinguished Microwave Lecturers of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S). He will be giving seminars globally on the basic principles and recent research on chip-scale wave-matter interactions for molecular identifications, time-keeping, quantum sensing, etc.

See the announcement from IEEE MTT Society

06/24/2019

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.

05/14/2019

Jimmy Mawdsley, with his recent M.Eng. thesis titled “Terahertz Frequency Synthesis in CMOS for a Chip-Scale Molecular Clock”, won both the MIT EECS David Adler Thesis Award and Morris Joseph Leven Award for best Masterworks Thesis Presentation. Congratulations to Jimmy and Good Luck with his future career in SpaceX!

04/20/2019

Prof. Ruonan Han gave an invited talk on 2019 IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (IFCS) about the group’s research on compact molecular clock based on THz spectroscopy.
Check the recorded talk video below (Copyright: IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society)

03/07/2019

Our invited review article “Filling the Gap: Silicon Terahertz Integrated Circuits Offer Our Best Bet” is published today on IEEE Microwave Magazine. Check it out to see why we believe the well-known “THz Gap” is in fact two-dimensional, and see our efforts to fill up this gap.

                 

02/26/2019

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.

02/20/2019

At this year’s IEEE Intl. Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC), Mohamed Ibrahim presented his paper on a scalable quantum magnetometer on CMOS.

02/14/2019

Zhi’s work on the large-scale, high-density THz CMOS heterodyne imaging sensor features the headline of MIT News today.

02/12/2019

Two invited papers to appear on IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC).

In Cheng Wang’s paper to be published in the April’s issue, we revealed the basic physics and circuit design details of the CMOS-based sub-THz molecular clock. In Zhi Hu’s paper to be published in the May’s issue, circuit design and new experimental results of a 32-unit, 240-GHz heterodyne array in CMOS are described. Congratulations to Cheng and Zhi, as well as all the other co-authors!

10/30/2018

Prof. Han joins the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of IEEE Intl. Microwave Symposium (IMS) and will serve as the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Very-Large-Scale-Integration Systems.

10/26/2018

Mohamed’s paper entitled “A Scalable Quantum Magnetometer in 65nm CMOS with Vector-Field Detection Capability” is accepted to the Intl. Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Other co-authors are Chris Foy, Dirk Englund and Ruonan Han. Congratulations!

08/17/2018

Jimmy Mawdsley is named Siebel Scholar. Congratulations to Jimmy on winning this prestigious award!

08/08/2018

Our group will collaborate with the quantum photonics lab, led by Prof. Dirk Englund at MIT, and the quanta research group, led by Prof. Isaac Chuang at MIT, on a very large scale integrated electronics and photonics platform for quantum-information processing. This project will be supported by the Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) program at the National Science Foundation (see news at NSF).

07/26/2018

Our group and the Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group led by Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan at MIT will be supported by the SpecEES (Spectrum Efficiency, Energy Efficiency and Security) program of National Science Foundation (NSF).
In this program, the two teams will jointly innovate tagging devices that utilize highly-secured transmission of sub-THz waves.

07/19/2018

Congratulations to Cheng Wang on passing his research qualifying exam (RQE)!

07/13/2018

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.

07/11/2018

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.

05/16/2018

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).

04/02/2018

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.

02/12/2018

Prof. Ruonan Han is promoted to Associate Professor without Tenure (AWOT), effective July 1, 2018. (News on MIT EECS)

02/12/2018

Our 240GHz large-scale heterodyne sensing array paper (Zhi Hu as the first author) is accepted to 2018 IEEE Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Symposium. On this CMOS chip, 32 heterodyne receivers are implemented with fully-integrated, phase-locked LO generator. Compared to prior square-law detector arrays, this chip increases the sensitivity by 6x and enables electronic steering of two concurrent narrow beams.

12/25/2017

Two invited papers on IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits are published (2017 December Issue and 2018 May Issue [available online]). Details of our THz frequency-comb-based spectrometer on a CMOS chip and our 1-THz radiation source on a SiGe chip are presented.

12/20/2017

Prof. Han joined the IEEE Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Symposium Technical Program Committee.

12/07/2017

For the 2nd time in a row, Prof. Ruonan Han delivered an invited talk at IEEE Intl. Electron Device Meetings (IEDM). He presented the group’s latest research progress in large-scale homogeneous and heterogeneous THz arrays, as well as the future trend of chip development, for ultra-high-resolution sensing and broadband spectroscopy.

11/01/2017

Prof. Ruonan Han gave two invited talks recently on IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS) and IEEE European Microwave Symposium.

09/01/2017

We welcome three new members to the group. Dr. Xiang Yi joined as a post-doctoral researcher. Prior to this appointment, he was a research scientist in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. Mina Kim (B.S. & M.S. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea) and Muhamed Ibrahim Khan (B. S., National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan, M.S. KAIST, Korea) joined as PhD students.

06/10/2017

Prof. Ruonan Han joined the IEEE Intl. Microwave Symposium (IMS) Steering Committee.

06/04/2017

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!

02/08/2017

Cheng Wang presented a paper on IEEE International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC 2017) — the flagship conference for integrated circuits and systems. In this paper, Cheng introduced high parallelism into broadband THz molecular sensing, and successfully obtained the ultra-narrow rotational spectral lines of molecules using a pair of CMOS frequency-comb chips.
Congratulations to Cheng!

02/05/2017

Zhi Hu’s paper on a high-power radiation source at 1THz using 130-nm SiGe HBT technology is accepted to IEEE Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC 2017). The paper will be presented in June 2017 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Congratulations to Zhi!

02/03/2017

Congratulations to Jack Holloway on passing his Ph.D. RQE (research qualifying exam).

02/01/2017

Two Awards: Cheng Wang won an IEEE MTT Boston Travel Grant, and Guo Zhang won the MIT MARC 2017 Best Pitch Award. Congratulations!

01/31/2017

Prof. Ruonan Han won the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career (NSF CAREER) Award. It will fund research and education programs on chip-scale electronic frequency combs at terahertz frequency for energy-efficient and broadband sensing and imaging. For more information, see this MIT News: “Three MIT engineering faculty win 2017 NSF CAREER Awards“.

12/07/2016

Prof. Ruonan Han gave an invited talk on International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM 2016). This is part of the focus session “Ultra-High Speed Electronics”, which assembled top researchers in THz technologies from MIT, Northrop Grumman, UCSB, RPI, etc. Ruonan reported the group’s research progress in silicon-based THz sources, sensors and interconnects. He also shared his vision on future energy-efficient THz microsystems.

12/01/2016

Our group receives a grant from MIT Lincoln Labs and will collaborate with their chemists to conduct research on molecular behaviors and interactions with THz chip devices for homeland security sensing, navigation, etc. We acknowledge MIT Lincoln Labs for this and their past support.

09/24/2016

Two new members to the group: Mohamed Ibrahim joins as a Ph.D. student, and Jimmy Mawdsley joins as a SuperUROP student. Welcome!

08/24/2016

Prof. Ruonan Han gave a talk in the THz technology workshop of 2016 IEEE Radio-Frequency Integration Technology (2016 RFIT).

06/11/2016

Dr. Rui Ma from Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab joins as a visiting scientist. Welcome!

06/01/2016

David Elliott Williams graduated from our group. His M. Eng. thesis studies, both theoretically and experimentally, avalanche breakdown in THz silicon devices for various sensing and metrology applications. David currently works at SpaceX Inc. and will join Caltech as a Ph.D. student.

01/28/2016

Cheng Wang won the 2016 ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award. Congratulations!

01/28/2016

A fully-integrated THz heterodyne imaging system is presented on ISSCC 2016. This is a collaboration between Cornell University, MIT and ST Microelectronics.

10/11/2015

Tingting Shi from Fudan University joins as a visiting student. Welcome!

09/01/2015

Cheng Wang, Zhi Hu and Guo Zhang join the group as Ph.D. students. Welcome!

05/30/2015

Pranav Kaundinya graduated from our group and joined Silicon Labs (Austin,TX) as an analog circuit designer. His M. Eng. thesis explores an interesting topologically approach that synthesizes high-frequency resonance without large-size, physical inductors.

02/04/2015

Captain Jack Holloway joins the group as a Ph.D. student. He also receives the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Military Fellowship. Welcome, Jack!

10/29/2014

Ruonan is appointed as the E. E. Landsman (1958) Career Chair (see the news).

10/13/2014

Prof. Han’s paper on a high-power THz transmitter is accepted to ISSCC 2015,
The chip demonstrates the record radiated power (3.3 mW @ 320 GHz) in silicon THz sources!

09/16/2014

Pranav joined as an M.Eng. student. Welcome!

07/14/2014

The group website is online!

07/01/2014

Ruonan Han joined the faculty of MIT EECS (see the news)