Design guidelines for a terahertz silicon micro-lens antenna

Abstract

A silicon lens antenna suited for future integrated terahertz arrays has been proposed recently. The antenna consists of an extended hemispherical silicon lens fed by a leaky-wave waveguide feed. The primary advantage is that the antenna is compatible with silicon micro-fabrication techniques as only a small sector of the lens is actually used. Moreover, it can be easily integrated with other silicon micromachined front-end components. In this letter, the design and optimization details of such a micro-lens antenna is presented. The design is validated with a set of measurements at 550 GHz from a prototype that has been fabricated using laser micro-fabrication.