Measurements on frequency-scaled models of SIS-mixers

A. P. Kerr

D. Winker

The mixer mount for a 75 -110 GHz SIS (superconductor-insulator-superconductor) receiver was scale modeled at 2 - 8 GHz . The mixer mount had a 4-step Chebychev single ridge transformer to launch the rf signal from the waveguide to a microstripline circuit. The microstripline circuit coupled the rf signal into the on-chip SIS element. A wire inductor in parallel with the mixer was used to tune out the capacitance of the SIS junction. Both the junction and the inductor had rf grounds provided by 90° radial stubs. In the scale model, a 50 Ω chip resistor in parallel with a 1 pF chip capacitor was used in place of the SIS junction to measure the rf matching properties. The inductor was modeled with a thin copper wire. The VSWR of the entire mount was less than 2.1 : 1 over the frequency band corresponding to 75 - 107 GHz. Receiver measurements with the actual mixer mount employing trilayer SIS tunnel junctions gave similar trends across the band.

Wenlei Shan, S. C. Shi, Yijun Feng +4 more

M. J. Feldman, S.-K. Pan, Anthony R. Kerr +1 more

In this paper measurements on a 115 GHz SIS mixer are shown to be in good quantitative agreement with the predictions of the quantum theory of mixing. A 40 × scale model of the mixer block was used to determine the experimental embedding impedances.

Anthony R. Kerr, S.-K. Pan

Patrice Serres, A. Navarrini, Yves Bortolotti +1 more

In this paper, we describe a measurement setup to characterize the intermediate frequency (IF) impedance of cryogenically cooled superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixers. A setup based on a commercial vector network analyzer (VNA), a circulator and a low noise amplifier (LNA) has allowed to increase the dynamic of the VNA and to perform accurate one-port measurements across a high dynamic range of the SIS mixers IF band. The mixers were biased in three different regions of their unpumped IV curve to obtain three known impedances which are close to the classical calibration SOLT standards (Short, Open, Load, Thru): the reference plane was located at the SIS junction itself and the calibration procedure allowed to calibrate out all IF circuitry of the measurement setup, including the on-chip SIS mixer intrinsic capacitance and inductance without requiring to thermally cycle and open the cryostat to locate and measure the different calibration standards. Thus, the devised method provides a simple and direct measurement of the SIS mixers IF impedance which can be used for quick, accurate and highly repeatable IF characterization of any type of millimeter and sub-millimeter wave SIS mixers. The measurement method is described and the experimental results of the IF output impedances of 3 mm band DSB and SSB mixers with 4 GHz wide IFs (across 4-8 GHz) are presented and compared with simulated predictions obtained from combining Tucker's SIS mixer theory and accurate electromagnetic modeling of the mixer structure.