On-Chip Antenna Design Using the Concepts of Metamaterial and SIW Principles Applicable to Terahertz Integrated Circuits Operating over 0.6–0.622 THz

Abstract

This research work presents the investigation of realizing an on-chip antenna based on the metamaterial concept, which is working over the terahertz (THz) band for applications in integrated circuits. The proposed on-chip antenna is constructed of five stacked layers of polyimide and aluminum as top and bottom substrates, radiation patches, ground plane, and feed line. The four square-shaped radiation patches are implemented on the 50 $\mu$ m top-polyimide substrate, and the feed line is realized on the 50 $\mu$ m bottom-polyimide layer by designing the simple square microstrip lines, which are all connected to each other and then excited by waveguide port. The ground plane including a coupling square slot has sandwiched between the top- and bottom-polyimide layers. The coupling square slot etched on the ground plane is exactly placed under the patch to optimum transfer the electromagnetic signal from the bottom feed line to the top radiation patch. To achieve high performance parameters without increasing the antenna's physical dimensions, the metamaterial and substrate integrated waveguide properties have been applied to the antenna structure by implementing linear tapered slots on the patch top surfaces and metallic via holes throughout the middle ground plane connecting top and bottom substrates to each other. The slots play the role of series left-handed (LH) capacitors (CL) and the via holes act as shunt LH inductors (LL). The overall dimension of the proposed metamaterial-based on-chip antenna is 1000 × 1000 × 100 μm3. This antenna can cover the frequency band from 0.6 THz to 0.622 THz, which is equal to 20 GHz bandwidth. The radiation gain and efficiency across the operating frequency band varies from 1.1 dBi to 1.8 dBi, and from 58% to 60.5%, respectively. The results confirm that the proposed on-chip antenna with compact dimensions, wide bandwidth over the terahertz domain, low profile, cost effective, simple configuration, and easy to manufacture can be potentially appropriate for terahertz integrated circuits.