Recently, the joint efforts of utilizing novel physical systems and advanced CMOS integrated circuit design are giving rise new opportunities. For instance, the on-chip magnetic resonant imager (MRI), quantum sensor based on Nitrogen-vacancy center, and cryogenic-CMOS in Quantum computers are emerging areas in this field.
In his talk titled “Terahertz CMOS Spectroscopic System-on-Chip: Towards Precise Timing and Rapid Gas Sensing”, Dr. Cheng Wang presented two novel CMOS-based devices harnessing the unique properties of rotational spectra of polar gaseous molecules.
First, built on the absolute specificity of rotational spectrum, a dual-frequency-comb CMOS rotational spectrometer was developed. The spectrometer performs sophisticated gas mixture analysis quickly without the ambiguity resulting from spectrum overlapping. It identifies bio-markers from the human exhaled gas for diagnosis of illnesses. In addition, the ultra-stable transition frequency of rotational spectra is adopted as a physical reference. An atomic clock grade, low cost, chip-scale molecular clock was devised. One potential application of this molecular clock is the time/phase synchronization of the future wireless systems.
During his Ph.D. in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, Dr. Wang was supervised by Professor Ruonan Han. The work was performed in the Microsystems Technology Laboratories at MIT.
Congratulations Cheng!
--Microsystems Technology Laboratories