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Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC)

A 220 GHz low noise superconducting receiver with wide instantaneous operating bandwidth

Chih-Chiang Han, Ming-Jye Wang, Tse-Jun Chen, Wei-Chun Lu, Edward Tong

Published Dec 1, 2012• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

A 220 GHz mixer chip based on a 3-junction series distributed superconducting mixer has been developed. This mixer employs a design, which minimizes the output capacitances, such that it can offer a wide instantaneous bandwidth of up to 12 GHz. We have incorporated this mixer into a receiver package and a dedicated automatic test bench has been developed to characterize its performance. The receiver demonstrates ultra low noise temperature, as low as 32 K, or 3 hν/k. The measured noise temperature remains below 50 K beyond 10 GHz IF.

DOI
10.1109/apmc.2012.6421620

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•Jan 1, 2013•0 citations
A 220 GHz mixer chip based on a 3-junction series distributed superconducting mixer has been developed. This mixer employs a design, which minimizes the output capacitances, such that it can offer a wide instantaneous bandwidth of up to 12 GHz. We have incorporated this mixer into a receiver package and a dedicated automatic test bench has been developed to characterize its performance. The receiver demonstrates ultra low noise temperature, as low as 32 K, or 3 hν/k. The measured noise temperature remains below 50 K beyond 10 GHz IF.
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A novel type of distributed superconducting mixer with very low output capacitance has been designed for a 330-420 GHz waveguide mixer. In this design, a pair of lumped element Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor junctions is connected in series to form the unit cell of a composite transmission line. The mixer utilizes two cascaded cells. Using an intermediate frequency (IF) of 5 GHz, we have measured Double-side-band (DSB) receiver noise temperatures of 90-120 K between 360 and 410 GHz. This mixer design offers very wide instantaneous bandwidth. The measured IF bandwidth is in excess of 18 GHz. At a Local Oscillator frequency of 384 GHz, the Y-factor measured at an IF frequency of 18 GHz is 2.1, compared to a Y-factor of 2.2 measured at an IF of 5 GHz. The mixer also has a high dynamic range. The 1-dB input compression point is only reached with an input black body load of 30,000 K.
A 230 GHz Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) mixer is designed focusing on a good performance in the IF frequency range of 4–16 GHz over the RF band from 211 to 275 GHz. A transition from a full-height waveguide to a probe is designed using HFSS. The mixer chips containing SIS junctions are designed and optimized to have low total capacitance of circuits to ensure wide IF bandwidth. The chip fabrication was done in Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), where the masks were conducted by TSMC. A lab test was conducted on a superconducting mixer with a cryogenic dewar. The gap voltage in the I-V curve of the mixer is approximately 8 mV, and there is a clear nonlinearity around a current of 110 μA, which matches well with the simulation. The receiver noise temperature is approximately 60 K including optical losses and the noise from the RF input.
We describe the design and fabrication of a 220 GHz superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer with ultrawide IF bandwidth. The mixer is fabricated on a 100 µm thick quartz substrate, with planar circuit on-chip integration. The RF power is coupled to the tunnel junction via a unilateral finline taper and a slotline-to-microstrip transition. We used a double-stub tuning network to tune out the junction’s parasitic capacitance at a broad RF bandwidth, and matched the output impedance of the mixer to the input impedance of the IF amplifier (50 Ω) from 4–18 GHz using a 6-stage IF impedance-transformer. We have fabricated these devices and have measured good DC current-voltage (IV) characteristic curves. The heterodyne mixing performance of these devices is currently being measured, and we expect to present the results in the forthcoming ISSTT conference in March.
The possibility of overcoming the main drawbacks of the traditional series arrays by using a parallel connection of SIS junctions for DC and IF current has been experimentally demonstrated in full height 70-116 GHz waveguide mixers. This new array concept has been successfully developed to: (i) avoid the influence of junction non-uniformity in the array; (ii) provide optimal matching at both RF input and IF output even in the case of high gain, and (iii) tune out junction capacitance without any DC blocks. The experimentally tested arrays contain 10 or 11 trilayer 2.5 mu m 2 Nb-AlO x -Nb junctions. Best values of T r (DSB) as low as 20+or-2 K have been measured at the receiver room temperature horn in the 104-108 GHz LO range with a 4 GHz IF and at a mixer ambient temperature of 4.5-5.5 K. An SSB mixer noise temperature as low as 6+or-3 K was estimated. This value is very close to the quantum noise limit hf/k approximately=5 K.
Superconductor-Insulator-Superconductor (SIS) tunnel junction mixers are now commonly used in as- tronomical receivers at (sub)millimeter wavelengths because of their superb sensitivity, high dynamic range and stability of operation. Niobium SIS mixers operating at frequencies well below the super- conducting gap (∼680 GHz) have already achieved quantum limited sensitivity. Therefore to further enhance the receiver sensitivity, increasing the Intermediate Frequency (IF) bandwidth of SIS mixers has became crucial. This thesis focuses on the theoretical modeling, design and experimental verifi- cation of Nb SIS mixers operating around 230 GHz with a wide IF bandwidth of 1–15 GHz. These mixers were designed for a single baseline heterodyne interferometer (GUBBINS), which is being built to observe the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect in the Cosmic Microwave Background. The combination of wide IF bandwidth SIS mixers and complex analogue correlators will allow GUBBINS to feature high surface brightness sensitivity, that helps to distinguish the weak SZ effect from the background noise. The SIS mixer detector system was assembled inside the GUBBINS cryostat together with the IF electronics and RF/LO optical systems. Low noise temperatures of around 71 K were then measured in the GUBBINS system. The Nb SIS mixer we have developed uses a unilateral finline and fully integrated planar circuits deposited on a silicon substrate, to couple the electromagnetic radiation from the waveguide into the SIS junction. The finline mixer allows a broad-band RF coupling, an easy integration of the on-chip planar circuits and an easy-to-fabricate mixer block. To achieve a wide IF bandwidth, the output impedance of the SIS mixer was well matched to the input impedance of the amplifier by a multi-stage microstrip circuit. Additionally, the planar circuit of the SIS mixer was also designed to have a small lumped inductance and capacitance. The SIS mixer chip was extensively simulated by rigorous electromagnetic software (HFSS) and the S-parameter was exported to a quantum mixing package SuperMix to produce a full-wave model of the mixer. Experimental testing yielded a best noise temperature of 50 K with an average noise temperature of 75 K over an RF bandwidth of 160 GHz– 260 GHz. We have performed thorough experimental and computational investigation of the IF system in particular the constraints on the bandwidth caused by the lumped element capacitance of the mixer chip and the matching of the output impedance of the mixer to the IF amplifier. Our conclusion is that a bandwidth of 1–15 GHz could be achieved using our mixer design, subject to the performance of the amplifier. Finally, a variable temperature load system was successfully developed and tested inside the cryostat, to avoid the losses from the room-temperature optics. We have showed that the noise temperature of the SIS detector could be reduced by as much as 15 K by testing the mixer using a variable temperature load inside the cryostat.