Localized THz Waves on Narrow Metal Wires by Electrical Stimulation

Abstract

As technologies evolve, manufacture of nanoscale circuits is currently possible. With reducing dimension of the circuits, the current dissipation in metal wires is more obvious. Studying the current dissipation phenomenon as a kind of noise is significant to optimize the design of nanoscale circuits. The current dissipation in metal wires induces thermally excited Terahertz waves (wavelength between 8 μm and 25 μm electromagnetic waves) which are localized at the surface within 100 nm. Therefore we utilize a home-made scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) which can probe thermally excited Terahertz waves with nanoscale spatial resolution without any external light source. The passive SNOM is equipped with a high sensitive detector named CSIP (semiconductor charge-sensitive infrared phototransistor) which can detect Terahertz waves with wavelength of about 15 μm. In this study we focus on current dissipation in biased narrow Nichrome (NiCr) wires with electrical stimulation. We prepare microelectronic devices with them and place at room temperature. We studied narrow NiCr wires and tried to observe the current dissipation phenomenon directly.