Nanowire bolometer using a 2D high-temperature superconductor

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable fabrication method for high-temperature superconductor nanowires used as highly responsive bolometers operating near liquid nitrogen temperature, with observed phase slip events and potential for performance scaling.

Contribution

The work introduces a non-invasive fabrication process for BSCCO nanowires and demonstrates their application as high-responsivity bolometers with scalable design possibilities.

Findings

High responsivity of 9.7 x 10^3 V/W in visible range

Observation of bias current-dependent localized photovoltage spots

Detection of phase slip events in small cross-section nanowires

Abstract

Superconducting nanowires are very important due to their applications ranging from quantum technology to astronomy. In this work, we implement a non-invasive process to fabricate nanowires of high-$T_\text{c}$ superconductor Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+\delta}$ (BSCCO). We demonstrate that our nanowires can be used as bolometers in the visible range with very high responsivity of 9.7 $\times$ 10$^{3}$ V/W. Interestingly, in a long (30 $\mu$m) nanowire of 9 nm thickness and 700 nm width, we observe bias current-dependent localized spots of maximum photovoltage. Moreover, the scalability of the bolometer responsivity with the normal state resistance of the nanowire could allow further performance improvement by increasing the nanowire length in a meander geometry. We observe phase slip events in nanowires with small cross-sections (12 nm thick, 300 nm wide, and 3 $\mu$m long) at low temperatures. Our study presents a scalable method for realizing sensitive bolometers working near the liquid-nitrogen temperature.