Baselmans JJA, Hajenius M, Gao JR, Klapwijk TM, de Korte PAJ, Voronov B, et al. Noise performance of NbN hot electron bolometer mixers at 2.5 THz and its dependence on the contact resistance. In: Proc. 14th Int. Symp. Space Terahertz Technol.; 2003. p. 11–9.
Abstract: NbN hot electron bolometer mixers (HEBM) are at this moment the best heterodyne receivers 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. The result is a low transparency interface between the bolometer itself and the contact/antenna structure. In this paper we report a detailed experimental study on a novel idea to increase the transparency of this interface. This leads to a record sensitivity and more reproducible performance. We compare identical bolometers, coupled with a spiral antenna, with different NbN bolometer-contact pad interfaces. We find that cleaning the NbN interface alone results in an increase in the noise temperature. However, cleaning the NbN interface and adding a thin additional superconductor prior to the gold contact deposition improves the noise temperature of the HEBm with more than a factor of 2. A device with a contact pad on top of an in-situ cleaned NbN film consisting of 10 nm of NbTiN and 40 nm of gold has a DSB noise temperature of 1050 K at 2.5 THz.
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Gao JR, Hajenius M, Yang ZQ, Baselmans JJA, Khosropanah P, Barends R, et al. Terahertz superconducting hot electron bolometer heterodyne receivers. IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond.. 2007;17(2):252–8.
Abstract: 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.
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Hajenius M, Baselmans JJA, Baryshev A, Gao JR, Klapwijk TM, Kooi JW, et al. Full characterization and analysis of a terahertz heterodyne receiver based on a NbN hot electron bolometer. J. Appl. Phys.. 2006;100(7):074507.
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Kooi JW, Baselmans JJA, Hajenius M, Gao JR, Klapwijk TM, Dieleman P, et al. IF impedance and mixer gain of NbN hot electron bolometers. J. Appl. Phys.. 2007;101(4):044511.
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Wild W, de Graauw T, Baryshev A, Bos A, Gao JR, Gunst A, et al. Terahertz technology for ESPRIT – a far-infrared space interferometer. In: Proc. 16th Int. Symp. Space Terahertz Technol. Göteborg, Sweden; 2005.
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