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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Josephson voltage standard microwave circuits fabricated in a modified all-niobium technology for operation at low drive frequencies

H.‐G. Meyer, G. Wende, Ludwig Fritzsch, Frank Thrum, Heiner Kohler

Published Jun 1, 1997• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A resonant type of cryoelectronic microwave circuit for the generation of frequency-scaled Josephson voltages is presented. The circuits consist of superconducting microstripline resonators with series arrays of Josephson tunnel junctions located on the microwave current antinodes. This microwave design was chosen to obtain highly accurate Josephson voltages at low microwave power levels and low drive frequencies. The resonator circuits have been fabricated in both niobium-lead and all-niobium technology. At present, we have observed long-term stable Josephson voltages up to 0.75 V for niobium-lead circuits with 1320 junctions and 0.66 V for all-niobium circuits with 1456 junctions, respectively.

DOI
10.1109/77.622041

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A new type of cryoelectronic microwave circuits in Nb/Al/sub 2/O/sub 3//Nb technology for the generation of frequency-scaled Josephson voltages is presented. The circuits consist of superconducting microstripline resonators with series arrays of Josephson tunnel junctions located on the rf current antinodes. The circuits are designed to obtain highly accurate Josephson voltages at low rf power levels and low drive frequencies. At present, we have observed Josephson voltages up to 0.66 V in a resonator circuit with 1456 junctions.
A new type of microwave circuit for the generation of frequency-scaled voltages is investigated. The circuit is designed as a superconducting microstrip line resonator and series arrays of Josephson tunnel junctions located within the rf current antinodes. The circuits are designed to obtain highly accurate voltages at low rf power level and low frequencies of about 10 GHz. For a resonator circuit with 432 junctions driven at about 10 GHz we have observed steps up to 0.25 V, the lifetime of which is about 20 minutes.>
We have investigated a new type of microwave circuit for the generation of frequency-scaled Josephson voltages useful for the representation of highly accurate reference voltages. The circuit consists of a superconducting microstrip resonator and series arrays of Josephson junctions integrated within its rf current antinodes. The circuit is designed to operate at low frequencies of about 10 GHz to simplify the microwave techniques. At a resonator circuit with four Josephson junctions driven at 10.9 GHz we have obtained stable overlapping Shapiro steps up to 4.6 mV at a step width of about 70 µA. A more advanced double-resonator circuit with altogether 216 junctions allows to generate scaled reference voltages up to 0.16 V at steps of about 25 µA in width and at a microwave frequency of 11.1 GHz.
The authors report on the design and operation of a superconducting microstrip resonator containing four series-connected highly hysteretic Josephson junctions in the top layer. This arrangement generates constant-voltage steps at X-band drive frequencies useful for a Josephson voltage standard. At 12 GHz, steps up to 5 mV have been obtained with step amplitudes of about 100 mu A. The resonator principle can be used to save microwave power and to simplify the microwave circuit. To obtain sufficiently large and stable steps the critical current density and the junction length must be matched carefully with the order of maximum step used for the operation of the Josephson voltage standard. The X-band microwave drive frequencies offer substantial advantages in terms of costs and handling of microwave equipment.>
We present a new type of microwave circuits for Josephson voltage standards. Coplanar strips (CPS) are used instead of microstriplines or coplanar waveguides (CPW) to integrate the Josephson junctions in a microwave transmission line. Compared to microstripline and CPW circuits the CPS design doubles the scale of integration and simplifies the fabrication technology. Well-operating 10 V circuits in CPS design with 17,000 SIS junctions and 1 V SINIS circuits were tested in a new cryoprobe. In this cryoprobe a low loss dielectric waveguide consisting of a teflon strip is used for the microwave transmission in the 70 GHz frequency range. The dielectric waveguide together with a fibreglass-reinforced plastic supporting tube reduces the contribution of the cryoprobe to the liquid helium boil-off rate drastically. This paper was presented at the 8th International Superconductive Electronics Conference, Osaka, Japan, 19–22 June 2001.
Josephson voltage standards utilize microwave-induced constant voltage steps occurring due to the ac Josephson effect. Existing standards can be considerably simplified and their accuracy improved by using a large number of series-connected Josephson tunnel junctions which are operated in the zero current step mode. For this purpose superconducting millimeter wave integrated circuits have been designed, fabricated, and tested. The circuits consist of a broadband taper between the rectangular waveguide and the planar structure, the Josephson junction series, a well-matched load, and dc pads. Circuits with various numbers of junctions have been fabricated by photo-lithographic techniques and tested at 4.2 K in liquid helium. The version with 1474 junctions produced voltages up to 1.2 V when operated at 90 GHz.