A Superconducting-Nanowire 3-Terminal Electronic Device
Superconducting electronics based on Josephson junctions are used to sense and process electronic signals with minimal loss; however, they are ultrasensitive to magnetic fields, limited in their amplification capabilities, and difficult to manufacture. We have developed a 3-terminal, nanowire-based...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
American Chemical Society (ACS)
2015
|
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99756 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7453-9031 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8553-6474 |
| Summary: | Superconducting electronics based on Josephson junctions are used to sense and process electronic signals with minimal loss; however, they are ultrasensitive to magnetic fields, limited in their amplification capabilities, and difficult to manufacture. We have developed a 3-terminal, nanowire-based superconducting electrothermal device which has no Josephson junctions. This device, which we call the nanocryotron, can be patterned from a single thin film of superconducting material with conventional electron-beam lithography. The nanocryotron has a demonstrated gain of >20, can drive impedances of 100 kΩ, and operates in typical ambient magnetic fields. We have additionally applied it both as a digital logic element in a half-adder circuit, and as a digital amplifier for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors pulses. The nanocryotron has immediate applications in classical and quantum communications, photon sensing, and astronomy, and its input characteristics are suitable for integration with existing superconducting technologies. |
|---|