Design of High Speed Resonant Tunneling Diode for Millimeter & Terahertz Applications

Abstract

The thesis entails the activities required in the design and the development of the high speed RF source based on RTD (resonant tunneling diode). In Quantum mechanical phenomenon a Quantum tunneling or tunneling is the process in which a particle tunnels through a barrier. The most important applications of this process in modern era devices are the tunnel diode, quantum computing, and the scanning tunneling microscope. Literature shows that this effect came in the early 20th century and it was accepted, as a general physical phenomenon, in mid-century. Resonant-tunneling structures in which electrons can tunnel through some resonant states at certain energy levels are referred to as a resonant-tunneling diode (RTD). The current–voltage characteristic often exhibits negative differential resistance regions. Tunneling diodes can be very compact and are also capable of ultra-high-speed operation because the quantum tunneling effect through the very thin layers is a very fast process. The project includes the Energy calculation of single and multiple Quantum Well Systems. It also includes the design of RTD for the THz wave generation and the IV curve of RTD designed. And the desired result is a schematic design of THz Oscillator using RTD which lead us to the High Speed RF Communication Source. The RTD is designed using GaAs/AlGaAs material, the energies (both electron and heavy hole) of RTD is calculated using the transfer matrix approach, the constructed RTD is then used to build an oscillator whose oscillation were recorded to be 6.04THz. Moreover an overview of further enhancing this oscillation into tens and hundreds of THz is also discussed in this work.