Development of THz Waveguide NbTiN HEB Mixers

Author

Jiang, Ling ; Shiba, Shoichi ; Shimbo, Ken ; Sakai, Nami ; Yamakura, Tetsuya ; Sugimura, Mika ; Ananthasubramanian, P.G. ; Maezawa, Hiroyuki ; Irimajiri, Yoshihisa ; Yamamoto, Satoshi

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Volume

19

Issue

3

fYear

2009

fDate

6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

301

Lastpage

304

Abstract

In this paper, we present the development of the waveguide niobium titanium nitride (NbTiN) superconducting hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixers, cryogenically cooled by a 4 K close-cycled refrigerator. The NbTiN thin film is formed on a crystalline quartz substrate by sputtering an NbTi target with the Ar and N₂ gas at room temperature. The HEB mixer element is fabricated by using the 12 nm NbTiN film, and is mounted on a waveguide block. Measurement of a Fourier transform spectrometer shows that the response of the mixer is centered near 810 GHz with a bandwidth of about 500 GHz. The uncorrected DSB receiver noise temperature is measured to be 500 K, and the noise bandwidth is to be 1.4 GHz at 810 GHz. The present result shows that a good noise performance can be obtained for the NbTiN HEB mixer even with a relatively thick film (12 nm) fabricated at the room temperature.

Keywords

Fourier transform spectroscopy; bolometers; cryogenics; hot carriers; niobium compounds; sputtering; submillimetre wave mixers; superconducting mixers; thin films; titanium compounds; Fourier transform spectrometer; NbTiN; THz waveguide HEB mixer; bandwidth 1.4 GHz; close-cycled refrigerator; crystalline quartz substrate; frequency 810 GHz; noise bandwidth; size 12 nm; superconducting hot electron bolometer mixer; temperature 293 K to 298 K; temperature 4 K; temperature 500 K; thin film; uncorrected DSB receiver noise temperature; Hot electron bolometer mixer; NbTiN film; Terahertz;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Applied Superconductivity, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1051-8223

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TASC.2009.2019071

Filename

5067261