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SchoGaN is a four-year proposal for an ambitious research project focused on the use of III-V Nitride materials to achieve GaN Schottky diode and associated frequency multiplier enabling the future development of high power terahertz (THz) frequency sources. The partners of SchoGaN project are three academic laboratories (CNRS-IEMN, CNRS-CRHEA and the LERMA) and a SME (T-Waves Technologies). The consortium brings the required know-how and expertise to achieve significant breakthroughs in the field of frequency multiplier and leading to the realization of high power, tunable, compact, portable, broadband, non-cryogenic THz sources vitally required for many new applications. In this consortium, IEMN and CRHEA bring a strong expertise developed for these last 20 years in III-Nitride technology and material growth, respectively. LERMA brings strong expertise in design, waveguide modelling and fabrication, and assembly of frequency multiplier circuit. T-Waves Technologies will evaluate our THz sources for industrial applications in imaging. The consortium is fully complementary to reach the objectives. It is recognized in our community that the terahertz frequencies range starts at the transition between millimeter and sub-millimeter wave, i.e. 0.3 THz and spreads up to the 10 THz. This large range offers a wide variety of applications: sensing molecules, security, imaging, space science and imaging, non-destructive testing, medical science, very high data rate wireless communications... However, to grow massively, these applications required low cost, compact, portable, reliable and non-cryogenic THz sources and, the most important, of high power level. Today, many technologies are in competition towards low cost and mass-market applications where THz sources are already a vital element. Actually, between the solid state world with the transistor and the optic world with the laser, we note, between 300 GHz and 10 THz, into the famous "THz Gap", that the availability of usable, effective, high power THz sources is tremendously lacking. The objective of the SchoGaN project is to respond to this lack. The only technology that has proven its potentials in the THz range relies on the frequency multiplier principle. The GaAs-based frequency multiplier chains delivers state of the art performance with an output power of 18 µW obtained at 2.58 THz and about 1 mW at 1 THz. However, even if these results are impressive, a large access to these power THz sources remains critical for mass-market applications. Despite the improvements in many technological and design aspects, all solutions cannot overcome the GaAs intrinsic electric field breakdown limitation and the limited thermal conductivity which both represent now the definitive bottlenecks. The search of a candidate exhibiting a high breakdown electric field combined with high thermal conductivity is therefore crucial. This candidate is the Gallium Nitride (GaN). The first bottleneck will be surpassed by its high breakdown electric field, 10 times larger than GaAs. The second bottleneck will be managed thanks to GaN and SiC substrate which present a thermal conductivity 3 and 10 times larger than GaAs, respectively. Both, high breakdown electric field and high thermal conductivity will increase the power handling capabilities of devices resulting in a high output power. It has been shown that the power handling capability of a GaN Schottky diode is almost one order of magnitude larger than its GaAs counterpart. The project addresses THz power sources based on the multiplication chain principle using Gallium Nitride Schottky diode. The signal generation using GaN Schottky diodes is expected to deliver an output power one order of magnitude higher than the current reference. That represents a technological breakthrough towards the next generation of THz sources based on multiplier principle. We target to reach 15 mW of power at 600 GHz, about 10 times the current state of the art.
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