Project of the Foundation for Polish Science IRA CENTERA

Project:

CENTERA – Center for Terahertz Technology Research and Applications

Financing overview:

CENTERA is a new Centre of Excellence financed by the Foundation for Polish Science (competition no. 8/2017) as part of the activity 4.3 "International Research Agendas“, Smart Growth Operational Programme 2014-2020.

Authors:

Professor Wojciech Knap and Professor Thomas Skotnicki

Financial support:

39 946 537 PLN

Field of research:

Physics, Engineering

Project aims:

Study of basic and applied properties of terahertz radiation. Developing innovative instruments and technologies taking advantage of terahertz frequencies.

Strategic foreign partner:

Goethe University Frankfurt (GUF, Germany),

Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN, France),

Pisa University and Istituto Nanoscienze in Pisa (Italy),

Laboratoire Charles Coulomb and the University of Montpellier (France),

RIKEN THz Center (Japan),

Tohoku University in Sendai (Japan),

Osaka University (Japan)

About project:

Center for Terahertz Research and Applications (CENTERA) is an independent research unit of the Institute of High Pressure Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, crafted to become a specialized, world-class, interdisciplinary research unit offering an original inter-disciplinary approach to implement Terahertz science and technology to the benefit of the society. It is directed by Prof. Wojciech Knap and Prof. Thomas Skotnicki and funded within the International Research Agendas Programme of the Foundation for Polish Science, carried out from the funds of the European Regional Development Fund under the Smart Growth Operational Programme (SG OP), Priority Axis 4: Increasing the research potential (https://www.fnp.org.pl/en/centera-the-centre-for-terahertz-technology-research-and-applications/).

The activity of CENTERA will be carried out by 5 interacting groups working in the following domains:

• Solid State Physics - mainly THz plasma instabilities in semiconductor-based low dimensional systems and topological insulators (WG1);
• Biology and Medicine - paving the way to applications, such as Terahertz signatures of the proteins binding heavy metals in plants and food and THz spectroscopy for diagnosis of cancerous and burned tissue (WG2);
• Electronics - exploration of high-frequency limits of Field Effect Transistors (FETs) and Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBTs) (WG3);
• Innovative optics and antennas towards THz-Integrated-Circuit Electronics (WG4);
• THz applications - demonstrators, and technology transfer (WG5).

Founders of the CENTERA Centre for Terahertz Technology Research and Applications:

Professor Wojciech Knap –graduated from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw. For many years he has been associated with the University of Montpellier and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. As part of the LIA-TERAMIR international lab he has coordinated the activities of Terahertz Radiation Lab (TeraGaN) at the Institute of High Pressure Physics, the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He is the author and co-author of more than 100 articles in international specialist scientific journals, and author of several patents. Prof. Knap’s scientific pursuits cover numerous fields, including the absorption and emission of terahertz light by free and trapped carriers in shallow dopant states, heterostructures involving GaN/AlGaN nitrides, plasma excitation in nanotransistors, and terahertz radiation of plasmonic structures.