A nanocryotron memory and logic family

The development of superconducting electronics based on nanocryotrons has been limited so far to few device circuits, in part due to the lack of standard and robust logic cells. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate designs for a set of nanocryotron-based building blocks that can be conf...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Buzzi, Alessandro, Castellani, Matteo, Foster, Reed A., Medeiros, Owen, Colangelo, Marco, Berggren, Karl K.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: AIP Publishing 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/153220
Description
Summary:The development of superconducting electronics based on nanocryotrons has been limited so far to few device circuits, in part due to the lack of standard and robust logic cells. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate designs for a set of nanocryotron-based building blocks that can be configured and combined to implement memory and logic functions. The devices were fabricated by patterning a single superconducting layer of niobium nitride and measured in liquid helium on a wide range of operating points. The tests show 10 − 4 bit error rates with above ± 20 % margins up to 50   MHz and the possibility of operating under the effect of an out-of-plane 36   mT magnetic field, with ± 30 % margins at 10   MHz. Additionally, we designed and measured an equivalent delay-flip-flop made of two memory cells to show the possibility of combining multiple building blocks to make larger circuits. These blocks may constitute a solid foundation for the development of nanocryotron logic circuits and finite-state machines with potential applications in the integrated processing and control of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors.