A plasmonic meta-rotary travelling-wave oscillator with ultrahigh phase accuracy and figure of merit

Da Yue Yao; Hao Chi Zhang; Pei Hang He; Jia Jie Shen; Jia Wen Zhu; Peigen Zhou; Xin Yu Zhang; Le Peng Zhang; Li Jie Wu; Cun Yue Wei; Rui Wen Shao; Yi Fan; Yang Zhao; Jixin Chen; Wei Hong; Tie Jun Cui

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-01966-z

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A plasmonic meta-rotary travelling-wave oscillator with ultrahigh phase accuracy and figure of merit

Original Articles

- A plasmonic meta-rotary travelling-wave oscillator with ultrahigh phase accuracy and figure of merit
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 10, Pages: 3058-3068(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
  2.Institute of Electromagnetic Space, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
- Author bio：
  
  Hao Chi Zhang (hczhang0118@seu.edu.cn)
  Tie Jun Cui (tjcui@seu.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-01966-z
  CLC：
- Received：23 January 2025，
  
  Revised：2025-06-20，
  
  Accepted：18 July 2025，
  
  Published Online：21 August 2025，
  
  Published：31 October 2025
- Accepted：
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Yao, D. Y. et al. A plasmonic meta-rotary travelling-wave oscillator with ultrahigh phase accuracy and figure of merit. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 3058-3068 (2025).
DOI：

Yao, D. Y. et al. A plasmonic meta-rotary travelling-wave oscillator with ultrahigh phase accuracy and figure of merit. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 3058-3068 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-01966-z.

摘要

Abstract

High phase accuracy and figure of merit (FOM) of quadrature signals are essential for integrated systems

including quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) communications and multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar. However

the traditional quadrature oscillators often struggle to meet the stringent requirements of high FOM and high quadrature phase accuracy simultaneously. To address this challenge

we propose a spoof surface plasmon polariton (SPP) metawaveguide (Meta) to design on-chip rotary traveling-wave oscillator (RTWO). By leveraging the advanced dispersion manipulation capability of Meta

the physical and electrical lengths of transmission line (TL) are effectively decoupled

thereby overcoming the limitations associated with the unequal electrical lengths of inner and outer loops of the resonator

which is difficult to achieve in the conventional RTWOs. Based on the design methodology

we realize a Meta-RTWO using the 65 nm CMOS technology and achieve a measured FOM of 188.5 dBc/Hz and a phase error of approximately 0.21°. These metrics surpass those of the traditional oscillators fabricated even by more advanced 28 nm CMOS processes. This study demonstrates that Meta-RTWO achieves a significant improvement in both output signal quadrature accuracy and FOM under process limitations without using additional phase adjustment structures.

关键词

Keywords

references

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