Design, Microfabrication, and Experiment of a Compact Mode Selection Filter for Sub-Terahertz Sheet Beam Traveling-Wave Tubes

In this article, a compact mode selection filter and a mode converter for the 0.22-THz sheet beam traveling-wave tube (SB-TWT) has been proposed, fabricated, and tested to realize selective absorption of high-order mode without interference on the working mode. The reasonable structure and placement is explored from theory to manufacturing method in order to minimize reflection and mode distortion by junction discontinuity. Two proof-of-concept prototypes have been fabricated and tested to analyze the error sources in terahertz device. And the corresponding error models are also constructed. Final transmission data exhibit an excellent agreement with the results of computer simulations when conductor loss is taken into consideration. Such −15-dB loss performance for high-order mode is verified allowing to cover the frequency band from 0.3 to 0.315 THz.