Cryogenic Gaas Readout Circuits for Low Temperature Detectors

Millimeter and Submillimeter Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IV, 2008

We have been developing cryogenic readout integrated circuits (ROICs) for sensitive detectors at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths: The ROICs are constructed from SONY GaAs-JFETs, which have excellent performance even at less than 1 K. In addition, it is suitable device for ultra low background applications because of the extremely low gate leakage current. In the spring of 2008, we have designed and fabricated 4-ch AC-coupled capacitive transimpedance amplifiers and several basic digital circuits giving multiplex function for 32-element SIS photon detector array. The expected performance of the amplifier is as follows; open loop gain of >2000, power consumption <1.5 µW, and input referred noise ≈ 1 µV/√Hz@1Hz. A summary of this 2008's experimental production and initial test results are presented in this paper.

2007 2nd International Workshop on Advances in Sensors and Interface, 2007

Superconducting tunnel junctions are promising as radiation detectors because of their larger energy resolution with respect to conventional Si-based detectors. We have developed a fabrication process for Nb-based STJ devices which allows to fabricate junctions with leakage currents well below 50 pA at 300 mK, a factor of 10 −6 less than the leakage current at 4.2 K. The junctions are diamond-shaped with areas between 20 × 20 and 100 × 100 µm 2 . We report the details of the fabrication process, together with an analysis of the structure of films by AFM, SEM and x-ray spectroscopy. We show the measured I − V curves at 300 mK, together with preliminary results on x-ray measurements at 300 mK with a 5 mC 55 Fe source.

Applied Physics Letters, 2009

2001

INTRODUCTION: Several types of superconducting detectors are being developed for NASA applications, including transition edge sensors (TES)1, superconducting tunnel junctions (STJ)2, and photon-counting direct detectors (SQPC)3. Despite the complexity of cryogenic operation, such detectors are desirable because of capabilities such as single-photon spectroscopy, or extreme levels of sensitivity, which cannot be obtained with uncooled detectors. Large format detector arrays will be facilitated by sensitive, fast, compact, low-power, multiplexable, on-chip amplifiers. For high impedance detectors such as the STJ and SQPC, the Radio Frequency Single Electron Transistor (RF-SET) seems to be an ideal readout amplifier.

2005

In this work four different mesoscopic superconducting devices have been experimentally studied: an ammeter based on a hysteretic Josephson junction switching from the superconducting state to the normal state, a conventional Cooper pair pump (CPP) based on two superconducting islands separated by tunnel junctions, a novel flux assisted Cooper pair pump and a thermometer based on a tunnel junction between a superconductor and a normal metal. These devices make use of phenomena related to superconductivity and are also benefiting from some properties of small structures, e.g., of quantum mechanical tunneling and of transport of single electrons. The present research focused on investigating performance limitations of these devices and the aim was to improve their performance. A hysteretic Josephson junction switching can be used as a sensitive current threshold detector. For many purposes, a smaller critical current I_c of the detecting junction would yield a higher current sensitivity. It was found in this Thesis that the main limitation of the ammeter is that with increasing sensitivity the negative effects due to dissipation start to dominate. In this Thesis the Josephson junction was also demonstrated as a shot-noise detector, and it was concluded that this kind of a device could probably be made into an absolute on-chip detector of Fano-factors and noise in general. A charge pump is a device which can periodically transfer a discrete amount of charge Q through an electrical circuit. The measured double island CPP introduced a frequency dependent current with a value close to the expected one at low pumping frequencies. The drawback in the measurements was that the direction of the pumped current was set by the bias voltage. The results of the measurement on flux assisted pumping were indeed very promising and the studied device was able to produce sufficiently high pumped currents of around 0.1 nA with reasonable accuracy. Thermometer based on NIS (Normal metal-Insulator-Superconductor) tunnel junctions is a very promising temperature sensor for bolometric radiation sensor applications. This work showed that it can be used as a sensitive thermometer up to MHz frequencies range and that its response time is limited by the electron-phonon scattering rate. Josephson junction, phase diffusion, Cooper pair pump, NIS tunnel junction 165 951-22-7709-3

Applied Physics Letters, 2005

We describe a new biasing scheme for single photon detectors based on superconducting tunnel junctions. It replaces a single detector junction with a circuit of three junctions and achieves biasing of a detector junction at subgap currents without the use of an external magnetic field. The biasing occurs through the nonlinear interaction of the three junctions, which we demonstrate through numerical simulation. This nonlinear state is numerically stable against external fluctuations and is compatible with high fidelity electrical readout of the photon-induced current. The elimination of the external magnetic field potentially increases the capability of these types of photon detectors and eases constraints involved in the fabrication of large detector arrays.

Cryogenics, 2009

This paper presents an ultra low noise instrumentation based on cryogenic electronic integrated circuits (ASICs : Application Specific Integrated Circuits). We have designed successively two ASICs in standard BiCMOS SiGe 0.35 µm technology that have proved to be operating at cryogenic temperatures. The main functions of these circuits are the readout and the multiplexing of SQUID/TES arrays. We report the cryogenic operation of a first ASIC version dedicated to the readout of a 2×4 pixel demonstrator array. We particularly emphasize on the development and the test phases of an ultra low noise (0.2 nV/√Hz) cryogenic amplifier designed with two multiplexed inputs. The cryogenic SiGe amplifier coupled to a SQUID in a FLL operating at 4.2 K is also presented. We finally report on the development of a second version of this circuit to readout a 3×8 detectors array with improved noise performances and upgraded functionalities.

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 2006

Superconducting tunnel junctions (STJs) are able to measure the energy of single photons in the range from near infrared to X-rays. They provide simultaneous information of the impact time and wavelength of an absorbed photon. The main difficulty of these detectors compared with conventional imaging detectors lies in their limited pixel number. Each STJ has to be connected independently and therefore the wiring becomes technologically more demanding as the number of STJs increases. One approach to solving this problem is to use a single large absorber and to distribute STJs for position sensitive signal readout. This configuration is able to detect single optical photons with an energy resolution close to that of a single STJ pixel. We have produced a Ta absorber strip with Ta/Al/AlOx/Al/Nb/Ta junctions at either end. The energy and position of single photons were measured simultaneously. The energy resolving power approaches the theoretical limit. We will present a simple Monte Carlo simulation which reproduces the measurement exactly.

Applied Physics Reviews

The development of quantum electronic devices operating below a few Kelvin degrees is raising the demand for cryogenic complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor electronics (CMOS) to be used as in situ classical control/readout circuitry. Having a minimal spatial separation between quantum and classical hardware is necessary to limit the electrical wiring to room temperature and the associated heat load and parasitic capacitances. Here, we report prototypical demonstrations of hybrid circuits combining silicon quantum dot devices and a classical transimpedance amplifier, which is characterized and then used to measure the current through the quantum dots. The two devices are positioned next to each other at 4.2 K to assess the use of the cryogenic transimpedance amplifier with respect to a room-temperature transimpedance amplifier. A quantum device built on the same substrate as the transimpedance amplifier is characterized down to 10 mK. The transimpedance amplifier is based on commercial 28 nm fully depleted Silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) CMOS. It consists of a two-stage Miller-compensated operational amplifier with a 10 MX polysilicon feedback resistor, yielding a gain of 1:1 Â 10 7 V/A. We show that the transimpedance amplifier operates at 10 mK with only 1 lW of power consumption, low enough to prevent heating. It exhibits linear response up to 640 nA and a measurement bandwidth of 2.6 kHz, which could be extended to about 200 kHz by design optimization. The realization of custom-made electronics in FDSOI technology for cryogenic operation at any temperature will improve measurement speed and quality inside cryostats with higher bandwidth, lower noise, and higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Direct detectors of submillimeter-wave radiation based on Nb/Al/AlOx/Al/Nb superconducting tunnel junctions (STJs) will be powerful tools for astronomical continuum observations in submillimeter-wave bands.