Material-Based Design and Evaluation of Photoconductive Antennas for Terahertz Application

With an emphasis on material comparison for best performance, this work offers the design and performance analysis of a terahertz (THz) dipole antenna operating in the 0–10 THz frequency range. FR4 and GaAs, two distinct substrate materials, are mixed with gold and silver as dipole materials in the analysis. The antennas were assessed using a number of important performance criteria, such as efficiency, gain, directivity, S-parameters (S11), and resonant frequency. In contrast to GaAs-based designs, the results show that FR4-based antennas have better impedance matching (lower S11 values). The silver-dipoled FR4 substrate showed the best overall performance across all investigated setups, with the highest gain, the best S-parameter characteristics, and the best directivity. These results demonstrate the promise of FR4-silver pairings for effective THz antenna designs, opening the door for developments in imaging, security, and 6G communication applications.