| Terahertz science is a promising and rapidly developing research area. However, solid state terahertz detectors of high performance are still needed. An antenna within each pixel is needed in these detectors so as to couple more incident radiation into the detector. In this thesis, a software package called Lumerical FDTD Solutions is used to optimize the terahertz antenna design. The ultimate goal is to design broadband antennas that work efficiently over desired frequency bands.;The transmission/absorption characteristics of various bowtie antennas were modeled using the software. For absorption modeling, an equivalent resistor was added to load the antenna and absorb the terahertz energy. The effect of various parameters, including geometrical shape, boundary condition, material index, were considered. Fat bowtie was chosen as the optimum design for a 215GHz antenna. Optimization was carried out to check how the gap, slot, distance between metal contacts would affect the performance of the antenna. A transmission experiment was designed to verify the validity of these simulations using a 188GHz source. Finally, some tests for the angular response of silicon/air interface and dipole antenna were done, in order to ascertain the efficiency of coupling between the optical telescope used to collect the THz radiation and the antenna/detector combination. |
