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.
