Delacour, C., Claudon, J., Poizat, J. - P., Pannetier, B., Bouchiat, V., de Lamaestre, R. E., et al. (2007). Superconducting single photon detectors made by local oxidation with an atomic force microscope. Appl. Phys. Lett., 90(19), 191116 (1 t0 3).
Abstract: The authors present a fabrication technique of superconducting single photon detectors made by local oxidation of niobium nitride ultrathin films. Narrow superconducting meander lines are obtained by direct writing of insulating niobium oxynitride lines through the films using voltage-biased tip of an atomic force microscope. Due to the 30nm resolution of the lithographic technique, the filling factor of the meander line can be made substantially higher than detector of similar geometry made by electron beam lithography, thus leading to increased quantum efficiency. Single photon detection regime of these devices is demonstrated at 4.2K.
The authors thank J.-P. Maneval for stimulating discussions. This work has been partly supported by ACI Nanoscience from French Ministry of Research, D.G.A., by Grant No. 02.445.11.7434 of Russian Ministry of Education and Science, and by the European Commission under project “SINPHONIA,” Contract No. NMP4-CT-2005-16433.
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Korneeva, Y., Florya, I., Semenov, A., Korneev, A., & Goltsman, G. (2011). New generation of nanowire NbN superconducting single-photon detector for mid-infrared. IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond., 21(3), 323–326.
Abstract: We present a break-through approach to mid-infrared single-photon detection based on nanowire NbN superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPD). Although SSPD became a mature technology for telecom wavelengths (1.3-1.55 μm) its further expansion to mid-infrared wavelength was hampered by low sensitivity above 2 μm. We managed to overcome this limit by reducing the nanowire width to 50 nm, while retaining high superconducting properties and connecting the wires in parallel to produce a voltage response of sufficient magnitude. The new device exhibits 10 times better quantum efficiency at 3.5 μm wavelength than the “standard” SSPD.
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Korneev, A., Korneeva, Y., Florya, I., Elezov, M., Manova, N., Tarkhov, M., et al. (2011). Recent advances in superconducting NbN single-photon detector development. In Proc. SPIE (Vol. 8072, 807202 (1 to 10)).
Abstract: Superconducting single-photon detector (SSPD) is a planar nanostructure patterned from 4-nm-thick NbN film deposited on sapphire substrate. The sensitive element of the SSPD is 100-nm-wide NbN strip. The device is operated at liquid helium temperature. Absorption of a photon leads to a local suppression of superconductivity producing subnanosecond-long voltage pulse. In infrared (at 1550 nm and longer wavelengths) SSPD outperforms avalanche photodiodes in terms of detection efficiency (DE), dark counts rate, maximum counting rate and timing jitter. Efficient single-mode fibre coupling of the SSPD enabled its usage in many applications ranging from single-photon sources research to quantum cryptography. Recently we managed to improve the SSPD performance and measured 25% detection efficiency at 1550 nm wavelength and dark counts rate of 10 s-1. We also improved photon-number resolving SSPD (PNR-SSPD) which realizes a spatial multiplexing of incident photons enabling resolving of up to 4 simultaneously absorbed photons. Another improvement is the increase of the photon absorption using a λ/4 microcavity integrated with the SSPD. And finally in our strive to increase the DE at longer wavelengths we fabricated SSPD with the strip almost twice narrower compared to the standard 100 nm and demonstrated that in middle infrared (about 3 μm wavelength) these devices have DE several times higher compared to the traditional SSPDs.
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Korneeva, Y. P., Vodolazov, D. Y., Semenov, A. V., Florya, I. N., Simonov, N., Baeva, E., et al. (2018). Optical single photon detection in micron-scaled NbN bridges. arXiv:1802.02881v1 [cond-mat.supr-con].
Abstract: We demonstrate experimentally that single photon detection can be achieved in micron-wide NbN bridges, with widths ranging from 0.53 μm to 5.15 μm and for photon-wavelengths from 408 nm to 1550 nm. The microbridges are biased with a dc current close to the experimental critical current, which is estimated to be about 50 % of the theoretically expected depairing current. These results offer an alternative to the standard superconducting single-photon detectors (SSPDs), based on nanometer scale nanowires implemented in a long meandering structure. The results are consistent with improved theoretical modelling based on the theory of non-equilibrium superconductivity including the vortex-assisted mechanism of initial dissipation.
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Korneeva, Y., Vodolazov, D., Florya, I., Manova, N., Smirnov, E., Korneev, A., et al. (2018). Single photon detection in micron scale NbN and α-MoSi superconducting strips. In EPJ Web Conf. (Vol. 190, 04010 (1 to 2)).
Abstract: We experimentally demonstrate the single photon detection in straight micrometer-wide NbN and α-MoSi bridges. Width of the bridges is 2 µm, while the wavelength of the photon changes from 408 to 1550 nm and critical current exceeds 50% of the depairing current. Obtained results offer the alternative route for design of detectors without resonator and meander structure and indirectly confirm vortex assisted mechanism of single photon detection.
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