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Completed TRL 2 (started at 1, targeting 2)
High Temperature Superconducting (YBCO) Josephson Junctions have historically had poor performance and reproducibility. This work is enabled by the junction fabrication process developed by a group at UCR, utilizing a focus beam of He ions (beam diameter ~1 nm) to directly write the Josephson barrier into junctions. This method enables precise tuning of the junctions which made Josephson mixers difficult to match into microwave circuits in the past. The mixers have a large IF bandwidth and the nanometer scale junctions will require only nanowatts of local oscillator power, important to move to large focal plane arrays of detectors.
The goal is to develop a high temperature superconductor Josephson mixer for THz high resolution spectroscopy. A factor of 4-5 improvement over state of the art at 2 THz compared to other low temperature detectors is expected. The junction parameters do not degrade with temperature until above 50 K means that these detectors should be more than an order of magnitude mores sensitive then available detectors for planetary missions requiring passively cooled instruments. This could be significant in enabling high resolution THz spectroscopy planetary bodies from a nearby orbit (for example comets). 50 K operating temperature would enable a Rosetta MIRO-like instrument with orders of magnitude better sensitivity to look at outer solar system objects. 4 K operation would enable a Herschel HIFI- like instrument, with large focal plane arrays of detectors (compared to single pixel) and improved integration time by an order of magnitude or better (depending on telescope size).
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