Nano-Strip Three-Terminal Superconducting Device for Cryogenic Detector Readout
S. Pagano, Nadia Martucciello, Roberto Cristiano, Mikkel Ejrnaes, A. Casaburi, Roberto Leoni, Alessandro Gaggero, F. Mattioli, J.C. Villégier, Paul Cavalier
A superconducting 3-terminal device based on NbN ultra-thin nano-strips has been realized. The device is capable of pulse discrimination and shaping and provides power gain with standard 50 Ω input and output impedance. It operates at 4.2 K and is well suited for the realization of output interfaces for superconducting digital circuits and as readout of cryogenic detectors. Successful realization of the integrated readout of a nano-strip single photon detectors is reported.
A superconducting 3-terminal device based on NbN ultra-thin nano-strips has been realized. The device is capable of pulse discrimination and shaping and provides power gain with standard 50 Ω input and output impedance. It operates at 4.2 K and is well suited for the realization of output interfaces for superconducting digital circuits and as readout of cryogenic detectors. Successful realization of the integrated readout of a nano-strip single photon detectors is reported.
We describe a new superconductive three-terminal device that acts as a fast pulse amplifier and discriminator. The device is based on a parallel nano-wire configuration. The nano-wires are properly biased near their critical current. When a current pulse of sufficient amplitude is injected into one of the wires, a transition to the normal state of all the wires occurs, thus generating a large output current pulse. This device could be used as a pulse amplifier for signals generated by nano-wire detectors or by RSFQ circuits. The parallel nano-wire structure can be realized with the same fabrication process used for NbN Superconducting Single Photon Detector (SSPD), so its integration into the existing technology is straightforward. Here we present numerical simulations of the device, with special attention to circuit requirement for the correct operation.
Superconducting electronics based on Josephson junctions are used to sense and process electronic signals with minimal loss; however, they are ultrasensitive to magnetic fields, limited in their amplification capabilities, and difficult to manufacture. We have developed a 3-terminal, nanowire-based superconducting electrothermal device which has no Josephson junctions. This device, which we call the nanocryotron, can be patterned from a single thin film of superconducting material with conventional electron-beam lithography. The nanocryotron has a demonstrated gain of >20, can drive impedances of 100 kΩ, and operates in typical ambient magnetic fields. We have additionally applied it both as a digital logic element in a half-adder circuit, and as a digital amplifier for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors pulses. The nanocryotron has immediate applications in classical and quantum communications, photon sensing, and astronomy, and its input characteristics are suitable for integration with existing superconducting technologies.
A superconducting pulse discriminator based on a cascade switch to the normal state of parallel ultrathin NbN nanostrips has been fabricated and carefully investigated. Correct operation was achieved using 1 ns input pulses with amplitudes down to 15 µA. The discriminator had a peak current gain of 12 and an FWHM timing jitter of 80 ps, limited by our measurement instrument resolution. These characteristics, together with simple on-chip integration, small area and low dissipation, make this device suitable for applications such as readout of fast cryogenic detectors and the output stage of superconducting digital circuits.
We have investigated advanced superconducting optical and infrared detectors for their integration with superconductive active circuits. The detectors are based on ultra-thin NbN striplines. NbN is the material of choice for single photon optical and infrared detectors, as already demonstrated in the literature. The detectors so far proposed are based on conceptually simple, although difficult to realize, sub-micrometric meander type structures. Most applications of such detectors require some treatment of the signal generated, either as pulse shaping or signal amplification, to fully exploit the detection capabilities, such as sub-ns response time and proportional response. We have developed a room temperature process that, while preserving reasonable superconducting properties of NbN, allows a simple integration of the detectors in Nb-based circuits. Moreover we have developed a passivation technique, by using a protective AlN layer on top of the NbN one. The developed technology allows complex detector configurations, such as integrated RSFQ circuits or SQUID readout, to be relatively easily realized. The response of our NbN strip to photon irradiation will be presented.
Scalable superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPDs) arrays require cryogenic digital circuits for multiplexing the output detection pulses. Among existing superconducting digital devices, superconducting nanowire cryotron (nTron) is a three-terminal device with an ultra-compact size, which is promising for large scale monolithic integration. In this report, in order to evaluate the potential and possibility of using nTrons for reading and digitizing SNSPD signals, we characterized the grey zone, speed, timing jitter and power dissipation of a proper designed nTron. With a DC bias on the gate, the nTron can be triggered by a few μA high and nanoseconds wide input signal, showing the nTron was capable of reading an SNSPD pulse at the same signal level. The timing jitter depended on the input signal level. For a 20 μA high and 5 ns wide input pulse, the timing jitter was 33.3 ps, while a typical SNSPD's jitter was around 50 ps. With removing the serial inductors and operating it in an AC bias mode. The nTron was demonstrated to be operated at a clock frequency of 615.4 MHz, which was faster than the maximum counting rate of a typical SNSPD. In additional, with a 50 Ω bias resistor and biased at 17.6 μA, the nTron had a total power dissipation of 19.7 nW. Although RSFQ circuits are faster than nTrons, for reading SNSPD or other detector arrays that demands less operation speed, our results suggest a digital circuit made from nTrons could be another promising alternative.
Conventional readout of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) sets an upper bound on the output voltage to be the product of the bias current and the load impedance, IB × Zload, where Zload is limited to 50 Ω in standard r.f. electronics. Here, we break this limit by interfacing the 50 Ω load and the SNSPD using an integrated superconducting transmission line taper. The taper is a transformer that effectively loads the SNSPD with high impedance without latching. At the expense of reduced maximum counting rate, it increases the amplitude of the detector output while preserving the fast rising edge. Using a taper with a starting width of 500 nm, we experimentally observed a 3.6× higher pulse amplitude, 3.7× faster slew rate, and 25.1 ps smaller timing jitter. The results match our numerical simulation, which incorporates both the hotspot dynamics in the SNSPD and the distributed nature in the transmission line taper. The taper studied here may become a useful tool to interface high-impedance superconducting nanowire devices to conventional low-impedance circuits.