Filling the Gap With Sand: When CMOS Reaches THz

This article presents some of our efforts from the electronic side. Instead of using expensive materials, we rely on silicon CMOS, a technology that is probably the most viable but often ignored, due to its speed and power-handling capability. CMOS is expected to drastically reduce the cost and size of current THz systems. Meanwhile, THz components can be built with other analog/digital signal processing circuitry on the same die, which enables unprecedented levels of integration and flexibility. This can trigger tremendous opportunities for the portable medical device market, such as detecting tooth cavities in vivo [3] and analyzing breath to diagnose disease [7]. In the following sections, we first discuss the challenges in THz CMOS and then show how we fill the THz gap with silicon chips that originate from sand.