About
The importance of 6G radio technology
GraPh-X will help progress communications technology from 5G to 6G.
This matters because as 6G radio technology evolves towards very high data-rate radio interconnections, providing multi-Gbit/s radio links and pervasive connections, it will provide these links and connections not only to people but to trillions of objects and cloud processing as well, including Artificial Intelligence.
Applications of sub-THz RADAR technology
Sub-THz RADAR technology has attracted tremendous interest in the last few years.
It can be applied to several fields, including food inspection, medical imaging, security, nondestructive testing/quality control and high-precision distance measurement.
Sub-THz Graphene photonic frequency mixer
The key component of GraPh-X is a novel optoelectronic frequency mixer able to mix two optical wavelengths (LO, local oscillator) and a high data rate electrical signal (IF/RF, intermediate/radio frequency). This can be achieved using graphene integrated photonics (GIP) technology. The photonic chip will be realized using a passive photonic platform that will integrate graphene as active material. The GraPh-X optoelectronic frequency mixer uses a novel approach based on the combination of photonics and electronics to achieve frequency up/down-conversion of Sub-THz signals covering the entire D band (110 – 170GHz) and H band (170 – 260GHz).
Wafer scale high mobility graphene stack technology
GraPh-X targets the development of a GIP technology platform. GraPh-X will develop wafer-scale van der Waals engineering techniques to obtain high mobility encapsulated graphene stacks (HMG-Stacks). Decoupling of the graphene layers and conservation of the Dirac character of the charge carriers will be achieved via twistronic, i.e., control of the relative orientation of atomically spaced crystals, either at the synthesis or assembly stage. Encapsulation in hBN will enable preserving the performance of HMG-stacks over long operating times in technologically relevant conditions, as well as fabricating a graphene top-gate for field-effect tuning of the optoelectronic response.