A Strained Silicon Cold Electron Bolometer using Schottky Contacts

TL;DR

This paper presents a strained silicon cold electron bolometer using Schottky contacts, demonstrating high optical efficiency and low noise for millimetre-wave radiation detection at cryogenic temperatures.

Contribution

The work introduces a strained silicon absorber in a cold electron bolometer, reducing electron-phonon coupling and enhancing responsivity compared to previous designs.

Findings

Maximum optical efficiency of 50% with planar antenna coupling

Noise equivalent power of 1.1 x 10^{-16} W/Hz^{1/2}

System NETD of 6 mK/Hz^{1/2}

Abstract

We describe optical characterisation of a Strained Silicon Cold Electron Bolometer (CEB), operating on a $350~\mathrm{mK}$ stage, designed for absorption of millimetre-wave radiation. The silicon Cold Electron Bolometer utilises Schottky contacts between a superconductor and an n++ doped silicon island to detect changes in the temperature of the charge carriers in the silicon, due to variations in absorbed radiation. By using strained silicon as the absorber, we decrease the electron-phonon coupling in the device and increase the responsivity to incoming power. The strained silicon absorber is coupled to a planar aluminium twin-slot antenna designed to couple to $160~\mathrm{GHz}$ and that serves as the superconducting contacts. From the measured optical responsivity and spectral response, we calculate a maximum optical efficiency of $50~\%$ for radiation coupled into the device by the planar antenna and an overall noise equivalent power (NEP), referred to absorbed optical power, of $1.1 \times 10^{-16}~\mathrm{\mbox{W Hz}^{-1/2}}$ when the detector is observing a $300~\mathrm{K}$ source through a $4~\mathrm{K}$ throughput limiting aperture. Even though this optical system is not optimised we measure a system noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD) of $6~\mathrm{\mbox{mK Hz}^{-1/2}}$. We measure the noise of the device using a cross-correlation of time stream data measured simultaneously with two junction field-effect transistor (JFET) amplifiers, with a base correlated noise level of $300~\mathrm{\mbox{pV Hz}^{-1/2}}$ and find that the total noise is consistent with a combination of photon noise, current shot noise and electron-phonon thermal noise.