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Applied Physics Letters

Doubling of sensitivity and bandwidth in phonon cooled hot electron bolometer mixers

J. J. A. Baselmans, Merlijn Hajenius, J. R. Gao, T. M. Klapwijk, Piet A. J. de Korte, B. Voronov, Gregory N Gol'tsman

Published Mar 8, 2004• 100 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate that the performance of NbN lattice cooled hot electron bolometer mixers depends strongly on the interface quality between the bolometer and the contact structure. We show experimentally that both the receiver noise temperature and the gain bandwidth can be improved by more than a factor of 2 by cleaning the interface and adding an additional superconducting interlayer to the contact pad. Using this we obtain a double sideband receiver noise temperature TN,DSB=950 K at 2.5 THz and 4.3 K, uncorrected for losses in the optics. At the same bias point, we obtain an IF gain bandwidth of 6 GHz.

DOI
10.1063/1.1667012

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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity•Mar 1, 2001•75 citations
We demonstrate that the performance of NbN lattice cooled hot electron bolometer mixers depends strongly on the interface quality between the bolometer and the contact structure. We show experimentally that both the receiver noise temperature and the gain bandwidth can be improved by more than a factor of 2 by cleaning the interface and adding an additional superconducting interlayer to the contact pad. Using this we obtain a double sideband receiver noise temperature TN,DSB=950 K at 2.5 THz and 4.3 K, uncorrected for losses in the optics. At the same bias point, we obtain an IF gain bandwidth of 6 GHz.
NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers are at this moment the best heterodyne detectors for frequencies above 1 THz. However, the fabrication procedure of these devices is such that the quality of the interface between the NbN superconducting film and the contact structure is not under good control. This results in a contact resistance between the NbN bolometer and the contact pad. We compare identical bolometers, with different NbN - contact pad interfaces, coupled with a spiral antenna. We find that cleaning the NbN interface and adding a thin additional superconductor prior to the gold contact deposition improves the noise temperature and the bandwidth of the HEB mixers with more than a factor of 2. We obtain a DSB noise temperature of 950 K at 2.5 THz and a Gain bandwidth of 5-6 GHz. For use in real receiver systems we design small volume (0.15x1 micron) HEB mixers with a twin slot antenna. We find that these mixers combine good sensitivity (900 K at 1.6 THz) with low LO power requirement, which is 160 - 240 nW at the Si lens of the mixer. This value is larger than expected from the isothermal technique and the known losses in the lens by a factor of 3-3.5.
We demonstrate that the performance of NbN lattice cooled hot electron bolometer mixers depends strongly on the interface quality between the bolometer and the contact structure. Both the receiver noise temperature and the gain bandwidth can be improved by a factor of 2 by cleaning the interface and adding an additional superconducting interlayer to the contact pad. Using this we obtain a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 950 K at 2.5 THz and 4.3 K, using a 0.4/spl times/4 /spl mu/m HEB mixer with a spiral antenna. At the same bias point, we obtain an IF gain bandwidth of 6 GHz. To comply with current demands on THz mixers for use in space based receivers we reduce the device size to 0.15/spl times/1 /spl mu/m and use a twin slot antenna. We report measurements of the noise temperature, LO power requirement, stability and the direct detection effect, using a mixer with a 1.6 THz twin slot antenna and a 1.462 THz solid state LO source with calibrated output power.
We studied the effect of the NbN/Au contact on the sensitivities of a NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer by measuring the double sideband (DSB) receiver noise temperature (T_rec_DSB) at three local oscillator frequencies of 1.6, 2.5 and 5.3 THz. The HEB has cleaned contact structures with a thick Au layer. We demonstrated low mixer noise temperatures (T_mixer_DSB) of 240 K and 290 K at 1.6 and 2.5 THz, respectively. The latter reach roughly 3 times the quantum noise at their frequencies. The mixer is developed for the proposed OASIS and SALTUS (concept) missions. The enhanced T_mixer_DSB are more than 30 % better in comparison with published NbN HEB mixers. The improvement can reduce the integration time of a heterodyne instrument roughly by a factor of 2. The T_mixer^DSB of the same HEB has shown limited improvement at 5.3 THz, which is partly due to non-optimized antenna geometry. Besides, the results also help to understand device physics of a wide HEB (4 um) at high frequencies.
We report a record double sideband noise temperature of 600 K (5hν/kB) offered by a NbN hot-electron bolometer receiver at 2.5 THz. Allowing for standing wave effects, this value was found to be constant in the intermediate frequency range 1–7 GHz, which indicates that the mixer has an unprecedentedly large noise bandwidth in excess of 7 GHz. The insight into this is provided by gain bandwidth measurements performed at the superconducting transition. They show that the dependence of the bandwidth on the mixer length follows the model for an HEB mixer with diffusion and phonon cooling of the hot electrons.
NbN phonon-cooled hot electron bolometer mixers (HEBs) have been realized with negligible contact resistance between the bolometer itself and the contact structure. Using a combination of in situ cleaning of the NbN film and the use of an additional superconducting interlayer of a 10 nm NbTiN layer between the Au of the contact structure and the NbN film superior noise temperatures have been obtained as low as 950 K at 2.5 THz and 750 K at 1.9 THz. Here we address in detail the DC characterization of these devices, the interface transparencies between the bolometers and the contacts and the consequences of these factors on the mixer performance.
Sensitivity and gain bandwidth measurements of phonon-cooled NbN superconducting hot-electron bolometer mixers are presented. The best receiver noise temperatures are: 700 K at 1.6 THz and 1100 K at 2.5 THz. Parylene as an antireflection coating on silicon has been investigated and used in the optics of the receiver. The dependence of the mixer gain bandwidth (GBW) on the bias voltage has been measured. Starting from low bias voltages, close to operating conditions yielding the lowest noise temperature, the GBW increases towards higher bias voltages, up to three times the initial value. The highest measured GBW is 9 GHz within the same bias range the noise temperature increases by a factor of two.