Noise temperature and local oscillator power requirement of NbN phonon-cooled hot electron bolometric mixers at terahertz frequencies
- 4 November 1998
- journal article
- conference paper
- Published by AIP Publishing in Applied Physics Letters
- Vol. 73 (19) , 2814-2816
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.122599
Abstract
In this letter, the noise performance of NbN-based phonon-cooled hot electron bolometric quasioptical mixers is investigated in the 0.55–1.1 THz frequency range. The best results of the double-sideband (DSB) noise temperature are: 500 K at 640 GHz, 600 K at 750 GHz, 850 K at 910 GHz, and 1250 K at 1.1 THz. The water vapor in the signal path causes significant contribution to the measured receiver noise temperature around 1.1 THz. The devices are made from 3-nm-thick NbN film on high-resistivity Si and integrated with a planar spiral antenna on the same substrate. The in-plane dimensions of the bolometer strip are typically 0.2×2 μm. The amount of local oscillator power absorbed in the bolometer is less than 100 nW.Keywords
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