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arXiv · 1603.03309

Optical Response of Strained- and Unstrained-Silicon Cold-Electron Bolometers

T. L. R. Brien·P. A. R. Ade·P. S. Barry·C. J. Dunscombe·D. R. Leadley·D. V. Morozov·M. Myronov·E. H. C. Parker·M. J. Prest·M. Prunnila·R. V. Sudiwala·T. E. Whall·P. D. Mauskopf
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Abstract

We describe the optical characterisation of two silicon cold-electron bolometers each consisting of a small ($32 \times 14~\mathrm{μm}$) island of degenerately doped silicon with superconducting aluminium contacts. Radiation is coupled into the silicon absorber with a twin-slot antenna designed to couple to 160-GHz radiation through a silicon lens.The first device has a highly doped silicon absorber, the second has a highly doped strained-silicon absorber.Using a novel method of cross-correlating the outputs from two parallel amplifiers, we measure noise-equivalent powers of $3.0 \times 10^{-16}$ and $6.6 \times 10^{-17}~\mathrm{W\,Hz^{-1/2}}$ for the control and strained device, respectively, when observing radiation from a 77-K source. In the case of the strained device, the noise-equivalent power is limited by the photon noise.

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T. L. R. Brien, P. A. R. Ade, P. S. Barry, C. J. Dunscombe, D. R. Leadley, D. V. Morozov, M. Myronov, E. H. C. Parker, M. J. Prest, M. Prunnila, R. V. Sudiwala, T. E. Whall, P. D. Mauskopf. 2016-03-10. Optical Response of Strained- and Unstrained-Silicon Cold-Electron Bolometers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-016-1569-x

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