Development of Ti/Au Transition-Edge Sensors for Single-Photon Detection

• Published in: IEEE transactions on applied superconductivity Vol. 34; no. 3; pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Xu, Xiaolong, Sun, Xiaoying, Chen, Jian, Rajteri, Mauro, Garrone, Hobey, Pepe, Carlo, Li, Wan, Li, Jinjin, Zhang, Mingyu, Bu, Tianjia, Gao, Ying, Sun, Tianbao, Wang, Xueshen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.05.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antireflection coating; Antireflection coatings; detection efficiency; Energy resolution; Inductively coupled plasma; Optical attenuators; Optical fiber sensors; Optical fibers; Optical films; Optical pulses; photon-number resolving; Photonics; Photons; Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition; Sensors; Silicon dioxide; Ti/Au; transition-edge sensor
• ISSN: 1051-8223; 1558-2515
• DOI: 10.1109/TASC.2024.3350569

Transition-edge sensors (TESs) have shown remarkable energy resolution and photon-number resolving ability. In this paper, we report the fabrication and characterization of Ti/Au optical TESs for the detection of single photon at the telecommunication wavelength 1550 nm. A SiO 2 /SiN x antireflection coating is deposited on top of TESs by an inductively coupled plasma-assisted plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (ICP-PECVD) process to improve the detection efficiency. Ti/Au (50/60 nm) TES with a small sensitive area 10 µm× 10 µm shows an energy resolution of 0.12 eV. The TES with a large sensitive area 20 µm× 20 µm can discriminate up to 55 incident photons and the detection efficiency is 46%.