Micromachined THz Systems - Enabling the Large-Scale Exploitation of the THz Frequency Spectrum

Micro-electromechanical (MEMS) devices are ubiquitous in modern society: mobile phones, toys, cars contain MEMS sensors which are manufactured in several billions of devices per year at sub-l Euro cost. This large-scale utilization of low-cost, highly-miniaturized sensor functions has been enabled by micromachining proving large-scale parallel processing, very high level of integration, excellent product uniformity and very high volume manufacturing capability. State-of-the-art THz technology, however, is still utilizing CNC-milling as the most common packaging and integration technology, which is a sequential fabrication technology which is not scalable to medium to high volumes. This paper summarizes the state of the art in silicon micromachining, discusses advantages and disadvantages and describes several millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave devices implemented in micromachined waveguide technology, including very-low loss filters, OMTs, couplers, integrated absorbers/attenuators, switches.

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