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International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology (ICMMT)

Performance of a 1.4 THz Twin-Slot Superconductivity Hot Electron Bolometer Mixer

Daowei Wang, Kangmin Zhou, Yuan Ren, Wei Miao, Wen Zhang, Sheng‐Cai Shi

Published May 1, 2018• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Three observation bands are planned for the Dome A Terahertz Explorer (DATE5), with the superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) served as the mixer for the H200 band ( 200 μm wavelength). In this paper, the performance of a twin-slot antenna coupled superconducting NbN HEB mixer is fully characterized at 1.34 THz. The measured uncorrected receiver noise temperature is 500 K and the intermediate frequency (IF) noise bandwidth is about 3 GHz. Moreover, the receiver stability is characterized by measuring the Allan variance time.

DOI
10.1109/icmmt.2018.8563642

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•Jan 1, 2004•0 citations
Three observation bands are planned for the Dome A Terahertz Explorer (DATE5), with the superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) served as the mixer for the H200 band ( 200 μm wavelength). In this paper, the performance of a twin-slot antenna coupled superconducting NbN HEB mixer is fully characterized at 1.34 THz. The measured uncorrected receiver noise temperature is 500 K and the intermediate frequency (IF) noise bandwidth is about 3 GHz. Moreover, the receiver stability is characterized by measuring the Allan variance time.
Purple Mountain Observatory as well as its collaborators is proposing to build a 5-m THz telescope (DATE5) at Dome A, Antarctic. Two THz heterodyne receivers, with one at 1.4 THz, are being considered as its first generation instrument. Here we report on the development of a 1.4-THz superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer for DATE5, which adopts a twin-slot antenna design. The direct-detection spectral (FTS) response of the 1.4-THz superconducting HEB mixer, with the HEB device fabricated at MSPU, has been measured, giving a frequency coverage of 0.8~1.5THz. And the measured FTS response appears in good agreement with the simulated one. Preliminary noise- temperature measurement at a lower frequency of 0.85 THz shows a receiver noise temperature of 1500 K. The estimated performance at 1.4 THz should be less than 1000 K in terms of the measured FTS response. Detailed simulation and experimental results will be presented.
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.
Low noise terahertz (THz) receivers based on superconducting niobium nitride (NbN) hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers have been designed, fabricated and measured for applications in astronomy and cosmology. The NbN HEB mixer consists of a planar antenna and an NbN bridge connecting across the antenna's inner terminals on a high-resistivity Si substrate. To eliminate the influence of direct detection and instability of the local oscillation (LO) power, a wire grid has been used to change the input LO power for compensating the shift of bias current during Y-factor measurement. The double sideband (DSB) receiver noise temperatures at 4.2K without corrections have been measured from 0.65 to 3.1THz. The excess quantum noise factor β of about 4 has been obtained, which agrees well with the calculated value. Allan variance of the HEB has been characterized, and Allan time TA longer than 0.4s is obtained. We also estimated the temperature resolution of the HEB from the Allan variance and obtained the minimum temperature resolution of 1.1K using a Gunn oscillator with its multipliers at 0.65THz as an LO source.
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 present a complete experimental characterization of a quasioptical twin-slot antenna coupled small area (1.0×0.15μm2) NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer compatible with currently available solid state tunable local oscillator (LO) sources. The required LO power absorbed in the HEB is analyzed in detail and equals only 25nW. Due to the small HEB volume and wide antenna bandwidth, an unwanted direct detection effect is observed which decreases the apparent sensitivity. Correcting for this effect results in a receiver noise temperature of 700K at 1.46THz. The intermediate frequency (IF) gain bandwidth is 2.3GHz and the IF noise bandwidth is 4GHz. The single channel receiver stability is limited to 0.2–0.3s in a 50MHz bandwidth.
We present recent results of the development of phonon cooled hot-electron bolometric (HEB) mixers for airborne and balloon borne terahertz heterodyne receivers. Three iomportant issues have been addresses: the quality of NbN films the HEB mixers were made from, the spectral properties of the HEB mixers and the local oscillator power required for optical operation. Studies with an atomic force microscope indicate, that the performance of the HEB mixer might have been effected by the microstructure of the NbN film. Antenna gain and noise temperature were investigated at terahertz frequencies for a HEB embedded in either log-spiral or twin-slot feed antenna. Comparison suggests that at frequencies above 3 THz the spiral feed provides better overall performance. At 1.6 THz, a power of 2.5 µW was required from the local oscillator for optimal operation of the HEB mixer.