Innovative Technologies for High Power Amplification at THz frequencies

In solid-state, a transistor-based concept is inherently transit-time limited. Transistors are already working with gate dimensions of 10s of nm and the saturation velocity of electrons in semiconductors is not going to exceed 107 – 108 cm/s, so there is no room to improve performance on a fundamental level. In VE devices, the diminished electron beam associated with scaling to small interaction structures (even assuming a beam can be adequately aligned) inherently limits the possibilities of improving efficiency or increasing output power. The proposed concept overcomes both of these fundamental limitations with a new beam-wave interaction structure that exploits the strengths of both technologies as opposed to stressing them individually for diminishing returns. The solid-state portion will provide an ideally confined beam of high density electrons and the amplifier design will be inherently a VED enabled by solid-state fabrication.