Jenshan Lin
$398,498
University of California-Davis
California
Engineering (ENG)
Dielectric constant or permittivity is an important property of materials and biological cells. The ubiquitous and fast sensing of them not only will help us better understand ourselves and surrounding environments, but can also help prevent devastating events in society, such as global pandemics, by timely detection. Ubiquitous dielectric sensing requires not only high performances such as accurate, robust, and trustworthy results, but also fast response, small form factor, low cost, low power consumption, etc., for sensors to be widely deployed in different scenarios and applications. Existing optical and electronic dielectric sensing techniques face great challenges to meet all the requirements. Therefore, this project aims to bridge the critical gap between optical sensing and electronic sensing and develop ubiquitous dielectric sensors meeting all the above requirements for daily usage. The research results of the proposed project are expected to not only directly advance ubiquitous dielectric sensing for human daily lives, but also impact the societies at large. The successfully demonstrated sub-THz/THz design techniques proposed in this project will advance knowledge and facilitate exploration of this underutilized spectrum. In the educational front, the principal investigator (PI) will broadly disseminate the research results through presentations and publications in scientific conferences and journals, as well as integrate research with education and outreach programs. The PI is committed to engaging and retaining students from underrepresented groups in engineering and STEM fields and attracting minority and female students through various local programs. The PI will continue her conscientious outreach efforts to local high schools to inspire K-12 students, especially minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged students, to join the engineering world. To materialize the overarching goal of ubiquitous access to dielectric sensors for daily lives, the proposed research will investigate fast, accurate, compact, trustable, low cost and power (FACTCoP) sub-THz/THz ring-resonator-based dielectric sensors to leverage the benefits of both high-performance optical micro-ring resonator sensors and unparalleled on-chip signal processing with THz speed from advanced semiconductor devices and circuits. It integrates three coherent major tasks enabled by new design ideas and schemes. The first task is to boost sensitivity by intensifying evanescent electromagnetic fields for enhanced wave-matter interactions through multi-dimensional sub-THz/THz slot rings and waveguides and using phase-based sensing modality. The second task is to develop a holistic noise suppression scheme to significantly reduce various noise sources, including transmitter signal phase noise, receiver flicker noise, common-mode noise, ambient noise coupling, as well as broadband thermal noise. The systematic noise suppression scheme is to improve minimum detectable signal for enhanced sensor resolution. The third task is to develop low-power, low-noise integrated signal generator in transmitter and signal detection and processing in receiver by exploring new innovative design ideas and techniques for sub-THz/THz integrated circuits and systems, such as a sub-THz/THz sub-sampling phase-locked loop on the transmitter side, multi-path noise cancellation on the receiver side. In addition to the sensor design and development, the PI and her team will also address the following key questions in their research: 1) what are the ultimate noise constraints for sub-THz/THz circuits in different noise domains? 2) with the proposed noise suppression scheme, what is the theoretically achievable sensing resolution? 3) under real system hardware implementation constraints, such as mismatches and parasitics in circuits and components, what are the practically achievable sensing resolutions? This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.