Micrometer-scale displacement and thickness sensing using a single terahertz resonant-tunneling diode

Abstract

Resonant-tunneling diodes (RTDs) support room-temperature terahertz (THz) oscillation and simultaneous THz-band detection, enabling compact monostatic THz sensors for practical and cost-effective sensing applications. In this paper, we present a highly integrated 280 GHz-band radar system based on a single RTD that exploits the self-mixing effect to generate a low-frequency interferometric signal. The resulting self-mixing signal is further analyzed from a radar perspective and processed to extract micrometer-scale displacement and thin-film thickness variations. Experimentally, the proposed system demonstrates a minimum detectable displacement of approximately 5 μm and quantitatively resolves polymer film thicknesses of 12.5, 25, and 50 μm.