Scalable High-density Superconducting Flex Cables and Circuits

There is a growing need for a commercially available high-density superconducting flex cable for a variety of ultra-sensitive, high pixel count instruments/focal plane arrays for the study of space as well as quantum computing and quantum information processing. However, traditional flex circuit manufacturing techniques and tools cannot achieve the high channel density necessary for these customers, and silicon/thin-film microfabrication techniques are slow, expensive, and cannot meet the production quantity and size requirements. Neither of the current methods for fabricating superconducting flex cables offers a pathway to a scalable and economical high-density superconducting flex cable that fully addresses the needs of either the space instruments or quantum computers. The proposed manufacturing approach will be able to create a scalable, economical high-density superconducting flex cable by combining elements of traditional flex circuit manufacturing with a new proprietary “direct write” nano-ablation process developed by Nielson Scientific. The nano-ablation technology enables the rapid fabrication of sub-micron scale features across large areas, eliminating the slow and costly steps required by lithography-based fabrication, and enabling the feature sizes necessary for high-density channels in the flex cables. The proposed Phase I feasibility study for the proposed high-density superconducting flex cable will be an experimental demonstration of the ability of the nano-ablation system to create high-density, electrically isolated traces at a scale necessary for the proposed flex cables, an engineering design study of processes for creating multiple superconducting metal layers in the flex circuits, superconducting vias between the layers, contact pads that enable superconducting connections to be made to the flex cable, and will include a detailed study of the technical requirements for potential applications of the flex cables. If the proposed project is carried over to Phase II, it will create a new manufacturing capability for high density superconducting flex cables and circuits that has the potential to benefit areas such as ultrasensitive instruments for space science, quantum computing, quantum information processing, and high sensitivity medical imaging including CT scans and X-ray imaging, and impact areas such as gravity imaging, geology, navigation, security, timekeeping, spectroscopy, chemistry, magnetometry, healthcare, and medicine with new types of quantum-enabled sensors.