January 2021
Spotlight Summary by Martin Koch
Logic gates for terahertz frequencies fabricated by three-dimensional printing
In this article, Castro-Camus and coauthors use three-dimensional printing to demonstrate the first waveguide-based logic gates for the terahertz frequency range. All-optical logic gates may find important applications in all-optical networks, optical computing and optical signal processing. Consequently, there have been several efforts to design and develop all-optical logic gates, e.g. by using photonic crystals. Yet, while communications at telecom wavelength is well established, short-range wireless communications using carrier waves in the lower THz frequency range is a rapidly developing field on all levels, including emitters, receivers and "optical" components. For the fabrication of the latter, 3D printing was recently established as a powerful method. Castro-Camus and coworkers used 3D printing to fabricate three waveguide-based gates for the logic operations OR, AND and XOR. Their devices are designed for 130 GHz using COMSOL, but could be geometrically rescaled for other operation frequencies. Since these devices could become the building blocks of digital terahertz communication systems, this well performed experimental work represents an interesting advancement to the field.
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Article Information
Logic gates for terahertz frequencies fabricated by three-dimensional printing
M. Ortiz-Martinez, A. I. Hernandez-Serrano, M. A. Justo Guerrero, E. Strupiechonski, and E. Castro-Camus
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 37(12) 3660-3664 (2020) View: HTML | PDF