Fabrication of superconducting niobium nitride nanowire with high aspect ratio for X-ray photon detection

Abstract

AbstractThe niobium nitride (NbN) nanowires fabricated with the high-quality ultra-thin NbN film with a thickness of 3 nm–6 nm were widely used for single photon detectors. These nanowires had a low aspect ratio, less than 1:20. However, increasing the thickness and the aspect ratio of highly-uniformed NbN nanowires without reducing the superconductivity is crucial for the device in detecting high-energy photons. In this paper, a high-quality superconducting nanowire with aspect ratio of 1:1 was fabricated with optimized process, which produced a superconducting critical current of 550 μA and a hysteresis of 36 μA at 2.2 K. With the optimization of the electron beam lithography process of AR-P6200.13 and the adjustion of the chamber pressure, the discharge power, as well as the auxiliary gas in the process of reactive ion etching (RIE), the meandered NbN nanowire structure with the minimum width of 80 nm, the duty cycle of 1:1 and the depth of 100 nm were finally obtained on the silicon nitride substrate. Simultaneously, the sidewall of nanowire was vertical and smooth, and the corresponding depth-width ratio was more than 1:1. The fabricated NbN nanowire will be applied to the detection of soft X-ray photon emitted from pulsars with a sub-10 ps time resolution.