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Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment

Fabrication and characterization of ultra-thin NbN hot electron bolometer for near infrared single photon detection

Bertrand Delaet, Jean-Claude Villégier, Walter Escoffier, Jean-Luc Thomassin, Philippe Feautrier, Irène Wang, Philippe Renaud-Goud, J.-Ph. Poizat

Published Dec 23, 2003• 19 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1016/j.nima.2003.11.309

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Hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixers are used in many low noise heterodyne radio astronomical receivers. Their noise temperature is at the level of 10–15 times the quantum limit, and their gain bandwidth is from 2 GHz to slightly more than 5 GHz depending on the type of substrate material used for a device fabrication. The HEB mixers presented in this Letter are a complex multilayer thin-film structure containing an ultra-thin superconducting film of NbN as a detecting element, and a thick normal metal layer as an antenna structure. The overall performance of the device has been improved by optimisation of the HEB mixer fabrication steps starting with ultra-thin NbN films, followed by NbN/Au bi-layers for antenna structures. Patterning was achieved using electron-beam lithography and lift-off processes. The noise temperature of the HEB mixer fabricated with the improved technology is about 800 K, as measured in a cryogenic-free system with a quantum cascade laser as a local oscillator.
In this paper, the superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer terahertz detector with an Nb5N6buffer layer was fabricated on the Si substrate. The Nb5N6buffer layer can significantly improve the superconductivity of ultra-thin NbN films. Preliminary results show that with a 30-nm-thick buffer, the zero resistance superconducting transition temperature of a 6-nm-thick NbN film device is 12.6 K, and the superconducting critical current of the device is increased by four times. The noise temperature, IF bandwidth and direct detection sensitivity of the device will be further characterized in following experiments.