Molecular Spectroscopy With a Compact 557-GHz Heterodyne Receiver
Journal article, 2014

We report on a heterodyne terahertz spectrometer based on a fully integrated 557-GHz receiver and a digital fast Fourier transform spectrometer. The receiver consists of a chain of multipliers and power amplifiers, followed by a heterostructure barrier varactor tripler that subharmonically pumps a membrane GaAs Schottky diode mixer. All sub-components are newly developed and optimized with regard to the overall receiver performance such as noise temperature, power consumption, weight and physical size. The receiver works at room temperature, has a double sideband noise temperature as low as 2000 K at a maximum power consumption of 4.5 W with an Allan time of 10 s and a sideband gain ratio of 0.52. The performance of the spectrometer is demonstrated by absorption spectroscopy of H2O and CH3OH with an instantaneous bandwidth of 1.5 GHz and a resolution of 183 kHz. Several pressure broadening parameters of methanol absorption lines were determined, that agree with other published data. Using the experimentally determined molecular parameters the CH3OH absorption spectrum could be modeled with very high precision.

CH3OH

methanol

terahertz

MMICs

molecular spectroscopy

Schottky diode

mHEMT

power amplifiers

heterodyne receiver

heterostructure barrier varactors

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Published in

IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology

2156-342X (ISSN) 21563446 (eISSN)

Vol. 4 Issue 4 p. 469-478 art. no 6825917

Categorizing

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

Infrastructure

Myfab (incl. Nanofabrication Laboratory)

Identifiers

DOI

10.1109/TTHZ.2014.2326554

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3/8/2025 1