New THz excitation of planar goubau line

Abstract

Quite recently, it has been found that conducting wires lying on aflat dielectric substrate can propagate Terahertz (THz) waves in the same way as conducting wires entirely coated with a dielectric (Goubau line). This phenomenon is interesting because it is a basic requirement to fabricate integrated circuits at THz frequencies. The excitation of planar Goubau line (PGL) waves was found to have a very strong Goubau mode on conducting wire. The excitation was made with a coplanar waveguide transition fed with a THz signal obtained from a vector network analyzer. The Goubau mode on PGL was excited with high efficiency (up to 75%. ). This is a first step in the design of THz BioMEMS dedicated to living cell investigations. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.