High-Gain On-Chip Antenna Design on Silicon Layer with Aperture Excitation for Terahertz Applications

This article investigates the feasibility of designing a high-gain on-chip antenna on silicon technology for sub-terahertz applications over a wide frequency range. High-gain is achieved by exciting the antenna using an aperture fed mechanism to couple electromagnetics energy from a metal slot-line, which is sandwiched between the silicon and polycarbonate substrates, to a 15-element array comprising circular and rectangular radiation patches fabricated on the top surface of the polycarbonate layer. An open ended microstrip line, which is orthogonal to the metal slot-line, is implemented on the underside of the silicon substrate. When the open ended microstrip line is excited it couples the signal to the metal slot-line which is subsequently coupled and radiated by the patch array. Measured results show the proposed on-chip antenna exhibits a reflection coefficient of less than -10 dB across 0.290 THz to 0.316 THz with a highest gain and radiation efficiency of 11.71 dBi and 70.8%, respectively, occurred at 0.3THz. The antenna has a narrow stopband between 0.292 THz to 0.294 THz. The physical size of the presented sub-terahertz on-chip antenna is 20×3.5×0.126mm3