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Noise performance of NbN Hot Electron Bolometer mixers at 2.5 THz and its dependence on the contact resistance

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

Published Apr 1, 2003• 7 citations
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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.
In this paper we study the effect of NbN-Au contact pads on the performance of a superconducting NbN hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer. The receiver noise temperature (Trec) and IF noise bandwidth (BN) at a LO frequency of 1.3 THz are measured at different bath temperatures between 3.3 K and 8.5 K. The measured Trec and BN of the superconducting HEB mixer are nearly constant for Tbath/Tc less than 0.7, and increase quickly with the further increase of Tbath. Measurement results demonstrate that the NbN-Au contact pads in superconducting state nearly have no influence on Trec and Bn, but the contact pads in resistive state make Trec and BN increase quickly with Tbath, indicated by the slope change of current-voltage curves and IF output power peak.
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.