Nano-scale Development of Plasmonic Amplifiers Based on 2D Materials

The library of 2D materials is growing at a rapid rate driven by the potential extraordinary electronic applications that they can offer.

In parallel, terahertz (THz) technologies has continued to draw a great interest due to the many applications that it can have a

profound impact in but has continuously been hindered due to the low power and wide scale applicability of current THz source

technologies. THz surface plasmonics is coming in to the forefront as an area which can bridge these two emerging technologies and

allow the necessary breakthrough that is needed in the so called THz source gap region of 0.5 – 3 THz. In this project the goal is to

develop architectures which can efficiently amplify THz waves based on surface plasmons in 2D materials. The fundamental attributes

that underline this approach resides in the interaction between THz radiation and electrically driven surface plasmons which provides

amplification through an exchange of energy and momentum limited only by the properties of the gain medium. Thus the limits of

the amplification are governed by limits to the electrical excitation of surface plasmons and how well these surface plasmons couple

to the THz radiation. By utilizing novel 2D materials with extraordinary electrical properties based on Transition Metal

Dichalcogenides (TMDs) and Transition Metal Monochalcogenides (TMMs) as well as traditional carbon based materials such as

graphene we plan to stretch these limits and achieve ground breaking results in terms of amplification and gain by incorporating the

developed amplifiers into existing state-of-the-art Silicon – Germanium hetero junction bipolar

(HBT) based THz arrays. In the consortium led by THALES, leading experts from advanced research institutes, SMEs and universities

which specialize in growth and modelling of 2D Materials as well as THz source development and characterization have come

together to achieve such a ground-breaking vision.