La génération d'onde THz de grande pureté spectrale par photomélange est une technique très prometteuse afin de réaliser des oscillateurs locaux THz performants. Nous avons donc proposé une approche originale consistant à associer un laser bi-fréquence émettant autour de 1 µm à un photomélangeur de bande interdite compatible. Le choix de cette longueur d'onde permet la réalisation de lasers pompés diodes compacts et peu onéreux ainsi que l'utilisation de photoconducteurs présentant les propriétés électriques requises. <br />Ainsi, nous avons développé 2 lasers bi-fréquence amplifiés utilisant des milieux actifs (KGW et CaF2) dopés Yb dont l'utilisation permet de générer des puissances optiques supérieurs à 1 W ainsi qu'un signal de battement électrique continu de bonne pureté spectrale (<30 kHz).<br />Nous avons ensuite étudié et caractérisé 2 matériaux photoconducteurs compatibles avec une illumination à 1 µm : l'InGaAsN et l'In.23Ga.77As-BT épitaxié à basse température (BT) sur substrat métamorphique et dopé Be. Les propriétés de ces deux matériaux ont été étudiées et comparées avec celles du GaAs-BT.<br />Après avoir modélisé le fonctionnement de photomélangeurs (en prenant en compte la participation des trous) nous avons effectué des expériences de photomélange : nous avons détecté un signal de quelques dizaines de nW dont la fréquence a pu être accordée jusqu'à 2 THz.<br />Enfin, nous avons proposé un nouveau type de photomélangeur guide vertical. Les modélisations ont montré que la puissance THz émise (0,2 mW à 1 THz), l'accordabilité (0-3 THz) et la pureté spectrale du signal généré (< 30 KHz) de cette source devraient en faire une des plus attractive dans cette gamme de fréquence.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a multibillion and a multinational science project to build the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. For a very large field of view, the combined collecting area would be one square kilometre (or 1, 000, 000 square metre) and spread over more than 3,000 km wide which will require a massive count of antennas (thousands). Each of the antennas contains hundreds of low noise amplifier (LNA) circuits. The antenna arrays are divided into low, medium and high operational frequencies and located at different positions to boost up the telescope’s scanning sensitivity.The objective of this work was to develop and fabricate fully on-chip LNA circuits to meet the stringent requirements for the mid-frequency array from 0.4 GHz to 1.4 GHz of the SKA radio astronomy telescope using Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit technology (MMIC). Due to the number of LNA reaching figures of millions, the fabricated circuits were designed with the consideration for low cost fabrication and high reliability in the receiver chain. Therefore, a relaxed optical lithography with Lg = 1 µm was adopted for a high yield fabrication process.Towards the fulfilment of the device’s low noise characteristics, a large number of device designs, fabrication and characterisation of InGaAs/InAlAs/InP pHEMTs were undertaken. These include optimisations at each critical fabrication steps. The device’s high breakdown and very low gate leakage characteristics were further improved by a combination of judicious epitaxial growth and manipulation of materials’ energy gaps. An attempt to increase the device breakdown voltage was also employed by incorporating Field Plate structure at the gate terminal. This yielded the devices with improvements in the breakdown voltage up to 15 V and very low gate leakage of 1 µA/mm, in addition to high transconductance (gm) characteristic. Fully integrated double stage LNA had measured NF varying from 1.2 dB to 1.6 dB from 0.4 GHz to 1.4 GHz, compared with a slightly lower NF obtained from simulation (0.8 dB to 1.1 dB) across the same frequency band.These are amongst the attractive device properties for the implementation of a fully on-chip MMIC LNA circuits demonstrated in this work. The lower circuit’s low noise characteristic has been demonstrated using large gate width geometry pHEMTs, where the system’s noise resistance (Rn) has successfully reduced to a few ohms. The work reported here should facilitate the successful implementation of rugged low noise amplifiers as required by SKA receivers.

No description available.

In this work, multi-band (multi-color) detector structures considering different semiconductor device concepts and architectures are presented. Results on detectors operating in ultraviolet-to-infrared regions (UV-to-IR) are discussed. Multi-band detectors are based on quantum dot (QD) structures; which include quantum-dots-in-a-well (DWELL), tunneling quantum dot infrared photodetectors (T-QDIPs), and bi-layer quantum dot infrared photodetectors (Bi-QDIPs); and homo-/heterojunction interfacial workfunction internal photoemission (HIWIP/HEIWIP) structures. QD-based detectors show multi-color characteristics in mid- and far-infrared (MIR/FIR) regions, where as HIWIP/HEIWIP detectors show responses in UV or near-infrared (NIR) regions, and MIR-to-FIR regions. In DWELL structures, InAs QDs are placed in an InGaAs/GaAs quantum well (QW) to introduce photon induced electronic transitions from energy states in the QD to that in QW, leading to multi-color response peaks. One of the DWELL detectors shows response peaks at ∼ 6.25, ∼ 10.5 and ∼ 23.3 µm. In T-QDIP structures, photoexcited carriers are selectively collected from InGaAs QDs through resonant tunneling, while the dark current is blocked using AlGaAs/InGaAsAlGaAs/ blocking barriers placed in the structure. A two-color T-QDIP with photoresponse peaks at 6 and 17 µm operating at room temperature and a 6 THz detector operating at 150 K are presented. Bi-QDIPs consist of two layers of InAs QDs with different QD sizes. The detector exhibits three distinct peaks at 5.6, 8.0, and 23.0 µm. A typical HIWIP/HEIWIP detector structure consists of a single (or series of) doped emitter(s) and undoped barrier(s), which are placed between two highly doped contact layers. The dual-band response arises from interband transitions of carriers in the undoped barrier and intraband transitions in the doped emitter. Two HIWIP detectors, p-GaAs/GaAs and p-Si/Si, showing interband responses with wavelength thresholds at 0.82 and 1.05 µm, and intraband responses with zero response thresholds at 70 and 32 µm, respectively, are presented. HEIWIP detectors based on n-GaN/AlGaN show an interband response in the UV region and intraband response in the 2-14 µm region. A GaN/AlGaN detector structure consisting of three electrical contacts for separate UV and IR active regions is proposed for simultaneous measurements of the two components of the photocurrent generated by UV and IR radiation.