A research team led by Professor Lee Chang-gu of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Inventing a New Concept Electronic Device for Terrahertz (THz) Technology
- 기계과 이창구 교수님 연구실
- 조회수1008
- 2021-03-12
Inventing a new concept electronic device for THZ technology
The research team applied for a patent as a source technology and expects it to be used in various areas such as high-speed wireless communication in the THZ area and high-resolution AR/VR that require high-capacity image processing in the future.
Professor Lee Chang-gu of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Budising, Dr. Pawansrivastava, and Dr. Yasir Hassan.
Professor Lee Chang-gu's team (Mechanical Engineering Department, Nanoscience and Technology Institute) has developed a new Terahertz (THz) technology device with a completely different structure using Black Lin, one of the two-dimensional materials. Terrahertz technology is a technology that uses sub-millimeter wavelengths in the 0.1–10 THz frequency band in electromagnetic waves. The technology is currently used in airport security scanners, non-destructive testing devices, and medical imaging diagnostic devices that can see things without radiation such as X-rays, but is expected to be used in innovative future technologies such as 6G ultra-fast wireless communication, cancer diagnosis systems, new materials development, and high-speed video processing.
The electronic device developed by the research team uses the anisotropy of the black lin to build up into three layers.It consists of an electronic element called the Resonant tunneling diode. A resonance tunnel diode is a high-speed device that processes high frequencies such as THz by creating a thin quantum well in the middle to move charges quickly and allowing charges to pass through it as if they were penetrating. The signal is processed when it passes through the quantum energy level caused by the quantum well's quantum binding effect. Previously, thin energy barriers were created on both sides of quantum wells, such as oxides with high energy levels, so that the charges on both sides would not mix together when signals did not need to flow. However, no matter how thin these walls are, they have a high energy level and thickness effect, which can only cause the signal to decrease. For this reason, energy was consumed a lot. Furthermore, it was not easy to implement higher frequency bands than a certain degree.
The research team was able to solve this problem by using the anisotropy of two-dimensional materials. When the element was made by accidentally turning the grid arrangement angle of the blackfin to 90 degrees, it was found that an energy barrier was created between the two layers. This is not a physically existing barrier, so the thickness is close to zero, resulting in very little energy loss. This created a structure that could easily process signals even at very high frequencies. The research team also found that the lattice arrangement angles between the two layers were similar at 30 and 60 degrees as well as 90 degrees, but not at 45 degrees. This suggests that the energy barrier effect is not only a single angle but also a multi-angle phenomenon, and that interactions between layers with completely different patterns are occurring. Meanwhile, the team found that signals could pass through the second quantum energy level, which could not be found in conventional resonance tunnel diodes. In conventional devices, this is only theoretically possible, but it could not be caused by high energy loss. The research team applied for a patent as a source technology and expects it to be used in various areas such as high-speed wireless communication in the THZ area and high-resolution AR/VR that require high-capacity image processing in the future.
The study was published online on March 8 (UK time), a sister journal of Nature Electronics, and was developed with the support of the Korea Research Foundation's mid-sized research (2020R1A2C2014687) and the global research lab (2016K1A1A2912707).
Reading the Research Stories Bulletin (Inventing a New Concept Electronic Device for THZ Technology) | Sungkyunkwan University (skku.edu)