The Pursuit of Practical Applications of THz CMOS Chips

The deficiency and slow adoption of terahertz (THz) applications have been long attributed to the expensive and under-performing hardware. That has motivated the research of THz CMOS circuits for over 15 years. However, traditional THz applications for astronomy, security screening and material analytics are arguably not a good match to CMOS, which is more suited for large-volume productions. And albeit the large progress of CMOS THz circuit, it is still not attractive enough for its large-volume and most-anticipated application - "Beyond-5G" broadband wireless. Aiming to tackle the above dilemma, in this paper we present our approaches that change the focus from "how CMOS helps making a better THz system" to "how THz helps making a better CMOS system". The demonstrated prototypes include high-resolution radar imager, molecular clock, dielectric wireline link, THz-ID, among others, which showcase the opportunities in applying the combination of THz and CMOS technologies in traditional applications of electronics.