Developing a terahertz emitter based on graphene was Alaudi Denisultanov’s project topic which he defended recently for his Master’s degree. As a result of his efforts and cutting edge research, he was awarded a trip to the International Microwave Symposium (IMS-2016) conference in San Francisco in late May where he was awarded a certificate and a grant to continue his research in this area. Mr. Denisultanov is an engineer from the International Institute of Photonics and Optical Information Technology at ITMO University.

One of the advantages of his research is that using a graphene based terahertz emitter is significantly better than current emitters, which are expensive, bulky and need specialized maintenance. In his research, Mr. Denisultanov has discovered that due to graphene’s properties, terahertz radiation generation can be obtained by using optical/electrical pumping increased by the external magnetic field and temperature. He says that “graphene was discovered more than ten years ago and there are still many contradicting studies and results.” He hopes that through his research, he will be able to “vary the values of temperature and magnetic field to see if they affect the generation, and if affected, how.”

Mr. Denisultanov sincerely hopes that in the near future he could visit and spend  some time with one of the leading researchers in this field, either in Japan to Taiichi Otsuji or in the University of Manchester, to Nobel Laureate Konstantin Novoselov, the discoverer of graphene.

Although graphene has remarkable properties, it also has some drawbacks, which Mr. Denisultanov is hoping to cope with in his studies by creating a multilayer silicon structure with graphene layers.

It is the hope that through his research, Mr. Denisultanov will be able to make a Wi-Fi device which will work using terahertz. Currently it is hypothetically possible to use THz to transfer gigabits of information per second. To be able to achieve this, he is looking for an ambitious interdisciplinary team involving IT specialists that could help him. Currently he plans, together with his colleagues Egor Sedykh and Igor Prozheev to apply for a grant with Edmund Optics Company, which can give up to ten thousand dollars on a worthy project.