Source:thznetwork.org

Spire Corporation announced today that it has received a $99,724 Department of the Army, U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command, Small Business Technology Transfer program award entitled, ¡°Resonant Tunneling Diode for High-Power Room-Temperature Terahertz Emission.¡±

This new, miniature solid-state device has the potential of providing more than 10 mW of continuous terahertz (also known as sub-millimeter wave) light at room temperature, which is currently only obtainable from much more complex, larger and expensive vacuum devices. Terahertz light is useful for defense, biomedical, and scientific applications, and has been shown to be capable of detecting hidden weapons and explosives. Spire will team with the University of Virginia, and will specify and analyze various candidate semiconductor material structures and specify required experimental methods. A subsequent phase of this program will produce a prototype terahertz oscillator.

Mr. Roger G. Little, Chairman and CEO of Spire Corporation, said, ¡°This program is of great interest and importance to Spire because such miniature terahertz sources are critically needed for defense, medical and industrial applications. They can be readily manufactured in our Bandwidth Semiconductor foundry, and their applications in biotechnology are in line with our Biomedical division¡¯s interest in offering this new modality for non-invasive cancer detection and other medical imaging concepts.¡±