Calculations of some doping nanostructurations and patterns improving the functionality of high-temperature superconductors for bolometer device applications

TL;DR

This study explores how doping nanostructures and patterning in high-temperature superconductors can significantly enhance their performance in bolometer devices, leading to better sensitivity and operational parameters.

Contribution

It introduces novel doping nanostructuration and patterning strategies that substantially improve bolometer functionality over conventional HTS materials.

Findings

Random nanoscale doping improves operational parameters.

Regular doping patterns further enhance performance.

One design doubles sensor response to radiation.

Abstract

We calculate the effects of doping nanostructuration and the patterning of thin films of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) with the aim of optimizing their functionality as sensing materials for resistive transition-edge bolometer devices (TES). We focus, in particular, on spatial variations of the carrier doping into the CuO$_2$ layers due to oxygen off-stoichiometry, (that induce, in turn, critical temperature variations) and explore following two major cases of such structurations: First, the random nanoscale disorder intrinsically associated to doping levels that do not maximize the superconducting critical temperature; our studies suggest that this first simple structuration already improves some of the bolometric operational parameters with respect to the conventional, nonstructured HTS materials used until now. Secondly, we consider the imposition of regular arrangements of zones with different nominal doping levels (patterning); we find that such regular patterns may improve the bolometer performance even further. We find one design that improves, with respect to nonstructured HTS materials, both the saturation power and the operating temperature width by more than one order of magnitude. It also almost doubles the response of the sensor to radiation.