Graphene Terahertz Plasmon Oscillators

目的：研制基于石墨烯受激发射等离子体放大的太赫兹振荡器和放大器。知识优势：石墨烯支持频率在太赫兹范围（2-10太赫兹）的等离子体激元。石墨烯中的等离子体激元与带间电子跃迁强耦合，并且在居群反转条件下具有非常大的增益值。如此大的增益值可以实现微米尺度的室温太赫兹振荡器，并为超高速电子、生物/化学传感、安全和医学成像等领域的应用提供相干太赫兹源。这里提出的研究愿景是通过借鉴激光的概念来实现从受激发射而不是从晶体管作用中提供增益的电子设备，从而为超高频电子学创造一个新的范例。更广泛的影响：拟议的工作将支持康奈尔大学两名研究生的博士研究。建议的项目将为研究生在纳米技术的前沿领域提供丰富的研究领域。PI将在康奈尔大学开设一门新的高级本科课程，名为“半导体纳米结构”。PI将参加最近由美国政府资助的新成立的巴基斯坦-美国联合项目“为穷人提供技术：为大众提供低成本信息和计算技术”。PI还将组织来自美国东北部不同大学的教师/学生进行小组访问/会议/研讨会，研究与石墨烯相关的主题，目的是让来自较小大学和学院的教师/学生参与进来，以促进教师之间的合作和学生之间的研究兴趣。

Objective: Development of terahertz oscillators and amplifiers that are based on plasmon amplification by stimulated emission in graphene.Intellectual Merit: Graphene supports plasmons that have frequencies in the terahertz range (2-10 THz). Plasmons in graphene are strongly coupled to the interband electronic transitions and can have very large gain values under population inversion conditions. Such large gain values could enable micron-scale room temperature terahertz oscillators and provide coherent terahertz sources for applications in areas such as ultrahigh speed electronics, biological/chemical sensing, and security and medical imaging. The vision of the research proposed here is to create a new paradigm for ultrahigh frequency electronics by borrowing concepts from lasers to realize electronic devices that provide gain from stimulated emission rather than from transistor action. Broader Impacts: The proposed work will support the PhD research of two graduate students at Cornell University. The proposed project would provide a rich set of areas for graduate student research in cutting edge areas of nanotechnology. The PI will introduce a new advance undergraduate course titled Semiconductor Nanostructures at Cornell. The PI will participate in the newly established Pakistan-US joint project, "Technology for the poor: low-cost information and computing technologies for the masses," recently funded by the US Government. The PI will also organize group visits/meetings/workshops between faculty/students belonging to different northeastern US universities working on topics related to graphene with the aim of involving faculty/students from smaller universities and colleges in order to promote collaborations among the faculty and research interest among the students.