High Temperature Superconductor Circuit Integration with CMOS Electronics on Sapphire

Various DoD systems are starting to incorporate superconducting devices for sensing and/or manipulating electromagnetic fields, from filters for shipboard communication systems, to superconducting transmission lines for use as a microwave power limiters, to development of electrically small antennas. With the breakthroughs in materials and fabrication technologies, it thus becomes feasible to design a system on sapphire with high sensitive HTS detectors, or analog filters alongside CMOS electronics, with the CMOS performing first stage amplification and/or feedback, with only 10s of microns separating the two, both operating in the cold side. Such a system should have major performance advantages over the present state-of-the-art. However, this effort has not been taken beyond the device concept demonstration. In this project, we are going to integrate CMOS electronics circuit (by Peregrine foundry service) with Josephson junction array on sapphire substrate to make monolithic devices for super low noise high sensitivity detections. The ion damage technology developed in this research allows fabrication of identical junctions reproducibly and can be incorporated into standard semiconductor fabrication process for the new generation monolithic devices. This project seeks to take the technology to the stage where it will be clear to industry that monolithic co-fabrication is viable for DoD systems.