Line width narrowing of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors using atomic layer etching

What is it about?

Superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) are a crucial technology as high efficiency camera pixels for space applications, and have had recent success in NASA's Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) demonstration. This work describes a process that enables fabrication for SNSPD cameras with better performance.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

SNSPD cameras with many pixels are hard as each nanowire needs to be written with very small physical dimensions. This new fabrication process uses a nanowire writing step that can be performed in bulk to write many pixels at once, and then subsequently shrinks the width of the nanowires to improve performance.