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Verma VB, Korzh B, Walter AB, Lita AE, Briggs RM, Colangelo M, Zhai Y, Wollman EE, Beyer AD, Allmaras JP, Vora H, Zhu D, Schmidt E, Kozorezov AG, Berggren KK, Mirin RP, Nam SW, Shaw MD. Single-photon detection in the mid-infrared up to 10 μm wavelength using tungsten silicide superconducting nanowire detectors. APL Photonics 2021; 6:10.1063/5.0048049. [PMID: 37621960 PMCID: PMC10448953 DOI: 10.1063/5.0048049] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/26/2023]
Abstract
We developed superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors based on tungsten silicide, which show saturated internal detection efficiency up to a wavelength of 10 μm. These detectors are promising for applications in the mid-infrared requiring sub-nanosecond timing, ultra-high gain stability, low dark counts, and high efficiency, such as chemical sensing, LIDAR, dark matter searches, and exoplanet spectroscopy.
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Affiliation(s)
- V. B. Verma
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
| | - B. Korzh
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - A. B. Walter
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - A. E. Lita
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
| | - R. M. Briggs
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - M. Colangelo
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
| | - Y. Zhai
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
| | - E. E. Wollman
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - A. D. Beyer
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - J. P. Allmaras
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - H. Vora
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
| | - D. Zhu
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
| | - E. Schmidt
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
| | - A. G. Kozorezov
- Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
| | - K. K. Berggren
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
| | - R. P. Mirin
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
| | - S. W. Nam
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
| | - M. D. Shaw
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, California 91109, USA
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Szypryt P, Meeker SR, Coiffard G, Fruitwala N, Bumble B, Ulbricht G, Walter AB, Daal M, Bockstiegel C, Collura G, Zobrist N, Lipartito I, Mazin BA. Large-format platinum silicide microwave kinetic inductance detectors for optical to near-IR astronomy. Opt Express 2017; 25:25894-25909. [PMID: 29041252 DOI: 10.1364/oe.25.025894] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/01/2017] [Accepted: 09/28/2017] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
We have fabricated and characterized 10,000 and 20,440 pixel Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID) arrays for the Dark-speckle Near-IR Energy-resolved Superconducting Spectrophotometer (DARKNESS) and the MKID Exoplanet Camera (MEC). These instruments are designed to sit behind adaptive optics systems with the goal of directly imaging exoplanets in a 800-1400 nm band. Previous large optical and near-IR MKID arrays were fabricated using substoichiometric titanium nitride (TiN) on a silicon substrate. These arrays, however, suffered from severe non-uniformities in the TiN critical temperature, causing resonances to shift away from their designed values and lowering usable detector yield. We have begun fabricating DARKNESS and MEC arrays using platinum silicide (PtSi) on sapphire instead of TiN. Not only do these arrays have much higher uniformity than the TiN arrays, resulting in higher pixel yields, they have demonstrated better spectral resolution than TiN MKIDs of similar design. PtSi MKIDs also do not display the hot pixel effects seen when illuminating TiN on silicon MKIDs with photons with wavelengths shorter than 1 µm.
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