With my college career coming to an end, I decided to start a series of posts entitled “Academia”. In each post, I will discuss a project or research I have been involved in.
In this first post of the series, I will briefly discuss my research in terahertz generation. In the spring of 2007, I had the distinct honor of working under Professor Leon McCaughan, a professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Under his supervision, I studied the properties of:
- Guided wave photonic devices and circuits
- Quantum optics
- Far infrared (terahertz) generation and spectrocopy
- Waveguide and photonic crystal theory
More importantly, I had the opportunity to take part in one of his research projects and work along side of other extremely talented students and researchers . A description of the project:
“Terahertz (THz) radiation is of great current interest for imaging science and technology. Applications include time-domain spectroscopy (e.g., the dielectric response of molecules in the far infrared), medical imaging in a new radiation band, detection and imaging for homeland security and defense applications, as well as communications.”
Within the project, I spent many hours in the Wisconsin Center for Applied Microelectronic Devices developing photolithography and reactive ion etching techniques to produce a THz photonic crystal in Silicon. By creating this photonic cystal, we were attempting to create a control in order to provide tunablity to the light source. Prior to the fabrication of the 2D crystal, we also undertook some computer-based model calculations.
Pictures from the research here:
![](https://danreich.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/2d-photonic-crystal.jpg?w=300)
Picture of 2D photonic crystals.
![2-D photonic crystal integrated ‘superstate’](https://danreich.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/lithography-bay.jpg?w=300)
Myself and two of my colleagues in the lithography bay.
Description of the project (can be found on www.nsf.gov)
Thank you to Professor Leon McCaughan for a truley invaluable experience!