Andreas Bülow, Mike Schmidt, Niklas Trzaska
The topic of our "Jugend forscht"-project is "Towards Terahertz Radiation". As this topical and exciting area of research is not covered in physics lessons due to the high cost of emitters and receivers, we tried to get close to this spectral range between microwaves and infrared on a low budget.
After numerous experiments and several simulations, we developed a novel metamaterial filter for electromagnetic waves. Furthermore, we constructed a very effective and cheap THz-filter from a bin-liner and a quartz slide.
We built a sensitive Golay cell for infrared and THz radiation from a nanotube-covered yoghurt cup. Much to our surprise, we came across a previously unknown CO2 absorber during the development of this Golay cell.