Resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) support room-temperature terahertz (THz) oscillation and simultaneous THz-band detection, enabling compact monostatic THz sensors for practical and cost-effective sensing applications. In this paper, we present a highly integrated 280 GHz-band radar system based on a single RTD that exploits the self-mixing effect to generate a low-frequency interferometric signal. The resulting self-mixing signal is further analyzed from a radar perspective and processed to extract micrometer-scale displacement and thin-film thickness variations. Experimentally, the proposed system demonstrates a minimum detectable displacement of approximately 5 um and quantitatively resolves polymer film thicknesses of 12.5, 25, and 50 um.
@article{arxiv.2602.23621,
title = {Micrometer-scale displacement and thickness sensing using a single terahertz resonant-tunneling diode},
author = {Li Yi and Shota Ito and Chao Tang and Yousuke Nishida and Koji Terumoto and Toshihisa Maeda and Yuta Inose and Masayuki Fujita},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.23621},
year = {2026}
}