Design of MEMS on-chip helical antenna for THz application

Abstract

In this work, a novel design tor a tully on-chip 3D antenna operating at 4 THz that can be fabricated by a novel MEMS (micro electro mechanical systems) technology directly realized on a silicon substrate is presented. The antenna includes two parts, the metallic helix and the microstrip on the substrate for feed. The proposed antenna structure is well suitable designed by MEMS technology, the fabrication of the structure needs only one wafer, and the antenna can be easily integrated with other parts of on-chip circuits. The antenna is characterized by high gain (17.6 dBi) and wide relative bandwidth (44%) from 2.8THz to 4.4THz. There are many tunable parameters of the helix, so that high performance THz antenna can be achieved by optimizing these parameters. The proposed antenna can be manufactured by MEMS processing with low fabrication cost, suitable for many THz systems.