The tunnel diode is back, as TeraHertz oscillator...

[Jan Panteltje]

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Interesting on chip construction

 

[Phil Allison]

Jan Panteltje wrote:
====================

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

** Always knew the tunnel diode would make it big one day.
Was the most talked about semi among young electronics geeks when I was 14 or 15.

Seriously - this could become a huge technology in the next decade.
Short range with massive data rate, dirt cheap - make WiFi look silly.



....... Phil

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:44:49 -0800 (PST)) it happened Phil
Allison <pallison49@gmail.com> wrote in
<a3159aa0-2c1c-4646-8cc9-afcd46834f04n@googlegroups.com>:

Jan Panteltje wrote:
====================

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114


** Always knew the tunnel diode would make it big one day.
Was the most talked about semi among young electronics geeks when I was 14 or 15.

Seriously - this could become a huge technology in the next decade.
Short range with massive data rate, dirt cheap - make WiFi look silly.

My first encounter with a tunnel diode was in the Ampex VR2000 modulators in quadruplex video recorders
where it was used to make an FM modulated carrier from say 5 MHz to 6.5 MHz (do not remember the exact frequency
but just above analog video bandwidth) recorded to tape.
Very reliable stuff, always worked.
Small module that replaced the big thing with tubes in the VR1000 models.
Bit different from the one I designed and showed with 2 74121 chips with modulated current sources...
That worked too
1970 or there about.... lemme see, after the moon landings that was, or more precisely just before studio Vitus burned down...
https://www.wikipe.wiki/wiki/nl/Studio_Vitus
was re-assigned next morning after the fire to the other TV studios that had those VR2000 recorders.
\' I was so much older then, younger than that now\'
Hey,that was a song :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92cF_KCH7TU

?
/

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/01/2022 06:31, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Interesting on chip construction

Indeed. That is quite an impressive trick and small too.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <srr5c4$ea6$1@dont-email.me>, pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com
says...

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Interesting on chip construction

I must take a look. I was researching on them at cryogenic temperatures
in the late 1960s and despite the excitement then they did not appear to
fulfil their promise...

Brian Josephson not only had a device named after him but was also a
chapter heading in a citations journal; double recognition!

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, January 14, 2022 at 7:44:53 PM UTC+11, palli...@gmail.com wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:
===================
Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114
** Always knew the tunnel diode would make it big one day.
Was the most talked about semi among young electronics geeks when I was 14 or 15.

When I was working at Plessey Pacific in Melbourne in 1970-1972, our integrated circuit designer was a guy called Mark Schapper who had done his Ph.D. at Melbourne on a scheme to use pairs of tunnel diodes as very high speed bistable memory elements, which a rather higher level obsession.

It was never commercialised, presumably because getting matched pairs of tunnel diodes in production volume wasn\'t a practical proposition.

The paper talks about using electron beam lithography to get well-defined small structures to generate the terahertz radiation, which isn\'t exactly a volume production technique either, though a couple of the electron beam microfabricators that Cambridge Instruments sold when I was there were devoted to making very small number of very fast, very small FETs which sold at absurd prices - the acceptance test for one them involved making three four-inch wafers of the devices which - when diced, packaged and sold - would have paid for the million dollar machine.

> Seriously - this could become a huge technology in the next decade.

If it is practical. Tunnel diodes are rather like nuclear fusion - always tomorrow\'s technology.

> Short range with massive data rate, dirt cheap - make WiFi look silly.

That\'s the dream. There\'s a lot of engineering left to do to make it work. if it can be made to work predictably in commercial volume.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 14 Jan 2022 05:56:13 -0800 (PST)) it happened Anthony
William Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in
<22e0f0b0-11e5-4462-9e2d-2a7a5487d8d3n@googlegroups.com>:

If it is practical. Tunnel diodes are rather like nuclear fusion - always tomorrow\'s
technology.

Plenty of tunnel diodes on ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/143092055523
https://www.ebay.com/itm/324711162685

 

[server]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:44:49 -0800 (PST), Phil Allison
<pallison49@gmail.com> wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:
====================

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114


** Always knew the tunnel diode would make it big one day.
Was the most talked about semi among young electronics geeks when I was 14 or 15.

Seriously - this could become a huge technology in the next decade.
Short range with massive data rate, dirt cheap - make WiFi look silly.



...... Phil

Germanium TDs were cool. I still have a bunch. Some would generate 25
ps steps in the days when a nanosecond was radical. My EE senior paper
was \"The Tunnel Diode Slideback Sampling Oscilloscope\" which I
invented, built, and documented the night before it was due. Won some
awards, which were a real nuisance.

The TD fabrication process was crazy. A tiny mesh of some metal was
thermally smashed into a pellet of germanium, and then etched until
just one tiny pillar was left connecting them.

https://www.eeeguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Tunnel-Diode-Equivalent-Circuit-3.jpg

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/tunnel-diodes/?action=dlattach;attach=40994


I have the GE Tunnel Diode Manual, 1st edition, 1961, one dollar.

ebay has TDs.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, January 14, 2022 at 2:29:34 AM UTC-8, Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/01/2022 06:31, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Indeed. That is quite an impressive trick and small too.

The tunnel diode is, alas, a two-terminal device which can oscillate, mix,
and amplify. Optimising ONE of those functions is a challenging design task.
In mass production, you can tweak a design then churn out product, like
all of the UHF pretuners (back in the days of television transmission
bandwidth expansion... half a century back).

My style, though, is more to cobble together a one-off that works reliably...
and it\'s hard to do that with such a nonlinear active component. For
that matter, at terahertz frequencies ALL component decisions are
hard, except that air is an acceptable insulator. I\'m thinking that
a pretuned transceiver module would be the only package that would be
quick and easy to employ.

Assuming it will be for short range high-bandwidth communication, it has
to compete with the burgeoning Bluetooth options. What is the market for
that kind of solution? It ain\'t wireless mice and keyboards.

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2022 13:49:40 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Friday, January 14, 2022 at 2:29:34 AM UTC-8, Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/01/2022 06:31, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Indeed. That is quite an impressive trick and small too.

The tunnel diode is, alas, a two-terminal device which can oscillate, mix,
and amplify. Optimising ONE of those functions is a challenging design task.

I recall one superhet where one TD was the RF amp, the local
oscillator, the mixer, and the first IF amp.

In mass production, you can tweak a design then churn out product, like
all of the UHF pretuners (back in the days of television transmission
bandwidth expansion... half a century back).

My style, though, is more to cobble together a one-off that works reliably...
and it\'s hard to do that with such a nonlinear active component. For
that matter, at terahertz frequencies ALL component decisions are
hard, except that air is an acceptable insulator. I\'m thinking that
a pretuned transceiver module would be the only package that would be
quick and easy to employ.

Assuming it will be for short range high-bandwidth communication, it has
to compete with the burgeoning Bluetooth options. What is the market for
that kind of solution? It ain\'t wireless mice and keyboards.
--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

 

[Phil Hobbs]

Mike Coon wrote:

In article <srr5c4$ea6$1@dont-email.me>, pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com
says...

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Interesting on chip construction

I must take a look. I was researching on them at cryogenic temperatures
in the late 1960s and despite the excitement then they did not appear to
fulfil their promise...

Brian Josephson not only had a device named after him but was also a
chapter heading in a citations journal; double recognition!

Yeah, the poor guy got the Nobel Prize for his master\'s thesis work.
That\'s an even bigger curse than a $100M trust fund.

Of course he went off the deep end almost immediately.

What a waste.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, January 15, 2022 at 12:14:49 PM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Mike Coon wrote:
In article <srr5c4$ea6$1...@dont-email.me>, pNaonSt...@yahoo.com
says...

Terahertz radiation source: Compact and simple:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111112018.htm

paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0068114

Interesting on chip construction

I must take a look. I was researching on them at cryogenic temperatures
in the late 1960s and despite the excitement then they did not appear to
fulfil their promise...

Brian Josephson not only had a device named after him but was also a
chapter heading in a citations journal; double recognition!

Yeah, the poor guy got the Nobel Prize for his master\'s thesis work.
That\'s an even bigger curse than a $100M trust fund.

Of course he went off the deep end almost immediately.

What a waste.

The Cambridge psychologists saw a lot of him in the 1980\'s - he got interested in psychology but didn\'t do anything useful. He wasn\'t obnoxious or a nuisance, but clearly couldn\'t get involved in any useful way. Somebody should have worked out what he might be good for and manoeuvred him into that area, but he might have been a bit intractable.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney