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Superconductor Science and Technology

Reduced noise in NbN hot-electron bolometer mixers by annealing

Z Q Yang, Merlijn Hajenius, J. J. A. Baselmans, J. R. Gao, B. Voronov, Gregory N Gol'tsman

Published Jan 31, 2006• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We find that the sensitivity of heterodyne receivers based on superconducting hot-electron bolometers (HEBs) increases by 25?30% after annealing at 85??C in vacuum. The devices studied are twin-slot antenna coupled mixers with a small NbN bridge of 1 ? 0.15??m2. We show that annealing changes the device properties as reflected in sharper resistive transitions of the complete device, apparently reducing the device-related noise. The lowest receiver noise temperature of 700?K is measured at a local oscillator frequency of 1.63?THz and a bath temperature of 4.3?K.

DOI
10.1088/0953-2048/19/4/l01

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We find that the sensitivity of heterodyne receivers based on superconducting hot-electron bolometers (HEBs) increases by 25?30% after annealing at 85??C in vacuum. The devices studied are twin-slot antenna coupled mixers with a small NbN bridge of 1 ? 0.15??m2. We show that annealing changes the device properties as reflected in sharper resistive transitions of the complete device, apparently reducing the device-related noise. The lowest receiver noise temperature of 700?K is measured at a local oscillator frequency of 1.63?THz and a bath temperature of 4.3?K.
We report that the heterodyne sensitivity of superconducting hot-electron bolometers (HEBs) increases by 25-30% after annealing at 85degC in high vacuum. The devices studied are twin-slot antenna coupled mixers with a small area NbN bridge of 1 mum times 0.15 mum, above which there is a SiO2passivation layer. The mixer noise temperature, gain, and resistance versus temperature curve of a HEB before and after annealing are compared and analysed. We show that the annealing reduces the intrinsic noise of the mixer by 37% and makes the superconducting transition of the bridge and the contacts sharper. We argue that the reduction ofthe noise is mainly due to the improvement of the transparency of the contact/film interface. The lowest receiver noise temperature of 700 K is measured at a local oscillator frequency of 1.63 THz and at a bath temperature of 4.2 K.
We find that the sensitivity of heterodyne receivers based on superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) increases by 25 − 30% after baking at 85 C and in a high vacuum. The devices studied are twin-slot antenna coupled HEB mixers with a small NbN bridge of 1×0.15 μm. The mixer noise temperature, gain, and resistance versus temperature curve of a HEB before and after baking are compared and analyzed. We show that baking reduces the intrinsic noise of the mixer by 37 % and makes the superconducting transition of the bridge and the contacts sharper. We argue that the reduction of the noise is due to the improvement of the transparency of the contact/film interface. The lowest receiver noise temperature of 700 K is measured at a local oscillator frequency of 1.63 THz and a bath temperature of 4.3 K.
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 highlight the progress on NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers achieved through fruitful collaboration between SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. This includes the best receiver noise temperatures of 700 K at 1.63 THz using a twin-slot antenna mixer and 1050 K at 2.84 THz using a spiral antenna coupled HEB mixer. The mixers are based on thin NbN films on Si and fabricated with a new contact-process and-structure. By reducing their areas HEB mixers have shown an LO power requirement as low as 30 nW. Those small HEB mixers have demonstrated equivalent sensitivity as those with large areas provided the direct detection effect due to broadband radiation is removed. To manifest that a HEB based heterodyne receiver can in practice be used at arbitrary frequencies above 2 THz, we demonstrate a 2.8 THz receiver using a THz quantum cascade laser (QCL) as local oscillator.
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.
To put space-based and airborne heterodyne instruments into operation at frequencies above 1 THz the superconducting NbN hot-electron bolometer (HEB) will be incorporated into heterodyne receiver as a mixer. At frequencies above 1.3 THz the sensitivity of the NbN HEB mixers outperform the one of the Schottky diodes and SIS-mixers, and the receiver noise temperature of the NbN HEB mixers increase with frequency. In this paper we present the results of the noise temperature measurements within one batch of NbN HEB mixers based on 3.5 mn thick superconducting NbN film grown on Si substrate with MgO buffer layer at the LO frequencies 2.5 THz and 3.8 THz.