Progress Toward Corrugated Feed Horn Arrays in Silicon.

We are developing monolithic arrays of corrugated feed horns fabricated in silicon for dual-polarization single-mode operation at 90, 145 and 220 GHz. The arrays consist of hundreds of platelet feed horns assembled from gold-coated stacks of micro-machined silicon wafers. As a first step, Au-coated Si waveguides with a circular, corrugated cross section were fabricated; their attenuation was measured to be less than 0.15 dB/cm from 80 to 110 GHz at room temperature. To ease the manufacture of horn arrays, electrolytic deposition of Au on degenerate Si without a metal seed layer was demonstrated. An apparatus for measuring the radiation pattern, optical efficiency, and spectral band-pass of prototype horns is described. Feed horn arrays made of silicon may find use in measurements of the polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]