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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

New Design and Implementation of a Fast Modulator in NbN Technology

Emanuele Baggetta, Bjoern Ebert, N. Hadacek, Jean-Claude Villégier, M. Maignan

Published Jun 1, 2005• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have designed a band-pass sigma-delta modulator made in niobium nitride technology. The basic components of such a 10 GHz carrier frequency modulator are a band filtering resonator and an SFQ comparator synchronized with a clock frequency up to 200 GHz sampling rate. We describe the clock design including an internal JTL and its testing circuit based on frequency division. The technology involves NbN/Ta/sub x/N/NbN internally shunted Josephson junctions with Jc/spl sim/20kA/cm/sup 2/ and high RnIc product (/spl sim/1 mV) at 4.2 K. Junction parameters are shown to be controlled by the reactive sputtering conditions of the Ta/sub x/N barrier. SiO/sub 2//MgO bi-layers are used as dielectrics associated with NbN wiring layers and ground-plane. All layers are prepared in a way compatible with a full processing at about 350/spl deg/C in order to minimize the London penetration depth of NbN layers and thus to allow circuits operation at about 9 K. High frequency simulations of the modulator's circuits are presented, including the comparator, the DEMUX, and the resonator response.

DOI
10.1109/tasc.2005.849872

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We have designed a band-pass sigma-delta modulator made in niobium nitride technology. The basic components of such a 10 GHz carrier frequency modulator are a band filtering resonator and an SFQ comparator synchronized with a clock frequency up to 200 GHz sampling rate. We describe the clock design including an internal JTL and its testing circuit based on frequency division. The technology involves NbN/Ta/sub x/N/NbN internally shunted Josephson junctions with Jc/spl sim/20kA/cm/sup 2/ and high RnIc product (/spl sim/1 mV) at 4.2 K. Junction parameters are shown to be controlled by the reactive sputtering conditions of the Ta/sub x/N barrier. SiO/sub 2//MgO bi-layers are used as dielectrics associated with NbN wiring layers and ground-plane. All layers are prepared in a way compatible with a full processing at about 350/spl deg/C in order to minimize the London penetration depth of NbN layers and thus to allow circuits operation at about 9 K. High frequency simulations of the modulator's circuits are presented, including the comparator, the DEMUX, and the resonator response.
We have fabricated both NbN/Ta x N/NbN SN*S-type, NbN/MgO/NbN SIS-type Josephson junctions and microwave band-pass filters on different substrates (Si, Sapphire, MgO). NbN films have been deposited on both sides of (100) oriented, 250 µm thick, MgO substrates with a high crystalline texture quality. The aim was to investigate the performances and the maximum achievable operating frequency in an NbN based RSFQ modulator front-end of an ADC in the 4 K-10 K temperature range. We observed that Ta x N thin films can be tuned from an insulating phase to a superconducting phase (Tc ∼4K) by varying the nitrogen content during sputter deposition while the barrier height of MgO can also be controlled by deposition conditions and by tri-layer postdeposition annealing. Junction properties (Jc∼10-25 kA/cm 2 ), Mac Cumber parameter and RnIc product measured up to 1 mV are shown to be controlled by the reactive sputtering conditions. We have designed three pole band-pass filters and resonators in a micro-strip configuration and studied the junction coupling with the filters. We will show that a sigma-delta NbN technology is a suitable solution for analogue-to-digital conversion in the future generations of telecommunication satellites to achieve high sampling frequency and large bandwidth at high carrier frequency signal.
In the future generations of telecommunication satellites, it will be necessary to reduce the analog part in reception systems and achieve RF front-end at higher carrier frequencies with higher sensitivity and higher bandwidth. RSFQ (Rapid Single Flux Quantum) superconducting logic is suitable to process very high speed digital data processing with very low power dissipation and with performances well beyond what should be possible with CMOS technology in the next decades. The RSFQ circuit technology based on superconducting niobium nitride (NbN) presently developed at CEA-G involves NbN/Ta(sub X)N/NbN internally shunted Josephson junctions with high critical current density and high maximum switching frequency close to 1THz, as required by ultra-fast RSFQ electronics. Very low power dissipation and very low noise level of fast NbN RSFQ gates designed and fabricated at CEA-G are presented. The RSFQ circuit for a sampling comparator has been studied operating in a sigma-delta modulator with a 30 GHz sinusoidal input carrier signal and high sampling clock frequency of about 200 GHz. We will present the thermal noise and how it influences the phase fluctuations. Such a nitride technology has been recently demonstrated to be fully compatible with large scale integration on 200 mm diameter silicon wafer at reasonable fabrication cost in a micro-nano-electronic platform at CEA-Leti. The applicability of NbN RSFQ digital functions in the next decade Space Telecoms will finally be possible thanks to the development of reliable, low power consuming, space qualified cryocoolers operating at about 10K. Moreover semiconductor system design and integration techniques can be simply adapted to superconductivity, to fit the rules of any RSFQ library-foundry network, such as "CONNECT" for Japan and "FLUXONICS" for Europe.
A new NbN multilayer technology has been developed on 3 inch diameter R-plane sapphire substrates, for combining on-chip fast RSFQ circuits with GHz bandwidth optical links, The circuits take advantage of two high quality [110] NbN layers sputtered epitaxially on sapphire at 600/spl deg/C and selectively patterned: a 400 nm thick layer (/spl lambda//sub L//spl sim/250 nm at 6 K) acts for the ground-plane and microbridge photodetectors are made of a 3.5-8 nm thick NbN epilayer with T/sub c/ above 11 K. Innovative dielectrics formed of 10 nm thick MgO sputtered on top of 200 mm SiO/sub 2/ layers are found to improve significantly the superconductivity of NbN junction electrode lines deposited below 300/spl deg/C. Good quality, hysteretic 2 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ area, NbN/MgO/NbN junctions with high J/sub c/ (up to 50 kA/cm/sup 2/) are obtained with very large gap voltage (6.20 mV) and low sub-gap leakage current (V/sub m/>15 mV) at 4.2 K. At 11 K such junctions are found self-shunted (J/sub c//spl sim/10 k4/cm/sup 2/) with R/sub n/I/sub c/ above 0.5 mV and with low J/sub c/ spread in arrays. J/sub c/ can be adjusted (reduced) without any detrimental effect on the junction quality or spread by annealing at 250/spl deg/C.
This paper presents a superconducting bandpass /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulator for direct analog-to-digital conversion of radio frequency signals in the gigahertz range. The design, based on a 2.23-GHz microstrip resonator and a single flux quantum comparator, exploits several advantages of superconducting electronics: the high quality factor of resonators, the fast switching speed of the Josephson junction, natural quantization of voltage pulses, and high circuit sensitivity. The modulator test chip includes an integrated acquisition memory for capturing output data at sampling rates up to 45 GHz. The small size (256 b) of the acquisition memory limits the frequency resolution of spectra based on standard fast Fourier transforms. Output spectra with enhanced resolution are obtained with a segmented correlation method. At a 42.6-GHz sampling rate, the measured SNR is 49 dB over a 20.8-MHz bandwidth, and a full-scale (FS) input is -17.4 dBm. At a 40.2-GHz sampling rate, the measured in-band noise is -57 dBFS over a 19.6-MHz bandwidth. The modulator test chip contains 4065 Josephson junctions and dissipates 1.9 mW at T=4.2 K.
Nitride superconductors and specially niobium nitride are key materials for developing high performance optoelectronic and digital circuits. We are presenting a way to achieve such high frequency devices on R-plane sapphire or MgO substrates. Deposition of thin and flat NbN films with Te above 10 K, low and reproducible penetration depth ( L 250 nm) and surface resistance (Rs) values up to I THz, is required and obtained by sputtering on a substrate heated in the 300-600 °C range. Simple sub-micrometer size HEB bridge structures where patterned even in a very thin (2-5 nm thick) NbN layers offering relaxation times below 30 ps. It is then possible to achieve fast optoelectronic data links and sensors on-chip with high clock frequency NbN RSFQ digital circuits.