A planar balanced tripler with two anodes, designed for operation at 1200 GHz. Anodes are formed via e-beam lithography.

Semiconductor Devices and Components. Activities in this area include semiconductor device design and fabrication, millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave circuit design, and flight component hardware development and test engineering. The devices, which are primarily based on Schottky diode structures, include monolithic membrane (MoMeD) mixers and frequency doubler and triplers. The doublers and triplers are used to generate local oscillator (LO) power at frequencies of several hundred GHz up to several THz for heterodyne receivers. Microfabrication techniques are critical for the fabrication of these structures. They are key components for submillimeter-wave (far-IR) heterodyne spectrometer instruments, with Earth and planetary science applications as well as astrophysics applications. Products include receiver front -ends for several instruments, including the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) in Earth-orbit on the Aura spacecraft, the Microwave Imager for the Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO), the HIFI instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory. New developments include prototype submillimeter-wave imagers and imaging radars.