Quantum Nanostructures and
Nanofabrication Group

Prof. Karl K. Berggren and Dr. P. Donald Keathley

News

QNN Quarterly Newsletter

Mar 31, 2023

Welcome to another QNN Newsletter! We have had a couple departures and some arrivals, as well as some exciting papers come out. Karl spent a few days with students at Jefferson lab in Virginia and at Fermilab in the Chicago area, working on interacting with the high-energy physics community, where there is some interest in the superconducting nanowires for electronics in their detectors. We also were happy to host a visit by Prof. Billy Putnam from UCDavis, our collaborator on both a DOE and NSF program related to free electrons coupled to nano-optical systems.

Best regards,

Karl and Donnie

 

Comings and Goings
The last few months we’ve welcomed the following new group members:

  • Valentin Karem, Visiting Student
  • Sahil Pontula, UROP

 

The following members have now left and become alumni group members:

  • Shruti Nirantar, now a visiting scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center
  • Torque El Dandachi, now working at Microsoft as a Quantum Simulation Engineer

 

Theses!
T. El Dandachi, “Efficient simulation of Large-Scale Superconducting Nanowire Circuits,” M.Eng. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023.

A. Bechhofer, “Geometrical Optimization of Planar Nano Vacuum Channel Transistors,” M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023.

 

Publications (11/1/22 – 02-28-23)
A. Buzzi, M. Castellani, R. A. Foster, O. Medeiros, M. Colangelo, and K. K. Berggren, “A Nanocryotron Memory and Logic Family.” arXiv, Dec. 15, 2022. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.07953.

R. A. Foster, M. Castellani, A. Buzzi, O. Medeiros, M. Colangelo, and K. K. Berggren, “A Superconducting Nanowire Binary Shift Register.” arXiv, Feb. 09, 2023. Accessed: Feb. 17, 2023. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04942

S. I. Davis et al., “Improved Heralded Single-Photon Source with a Photon-Number-Resolving Superconducting Nanowire Detector,” Phys. Rev. Applied, vol. 18, no. 6, p. 064007, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.18.064007.

Y. Hochberg et al., “New constraints on dark matter from superconducting nanowires,” Phys. Rev. D, vol. 106, no. 11, p. 112005, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.106.112005.

E. Batson et al., “Reduced ITO for Transparent Superconducting Electronics.” arXiv, Dec. 16, 2022. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.08573.

E. Piatti et al., “Reversible Tuning of Superconductivity in Ion-Gated NbN Ultrathin Films by Self-Encapsulation with a High-k Dielectric Layer,” Phys. Rev. Applied, vol. 18, no. 5, p. 054023, Nov. 2022, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.18.054023.

P. D. Keathley, S. V. B. Jensen, M. Yeung, M. R. Bionta, and L. B. Madsen, “Uncovering extreme nonlinear dynamics in solids through time-domain field analysis,” Phys. Rev. B, vol. 107, no. 5, p. 054302, Feb. 2023, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevB.107.054302.

 

Talks (11-01-22 to 02-28-23)
K. K. Berggren, “The Cryotron Reborn: Superconducting-Nanostrip-Based Electronics,” presented at the Applications of Superconducting Electronics and Detectors Workshop, Newport News, VA, Nov. 30, 2022.

Shruti’s farewell get together on January 6th. From right to left: Karl Berggren, Stewart Koppel, Matthew Yeung, Lu-Ting Chou, Emma Batson, Maurice Krieelart, Shruti Nirantar, DJ Paul, Adina Bechhofer, Owen Medeiros, John Simonaitis, Marco Colangelo, Torque El Dandachi, and Donnie Keathley.

 

Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering

Oct 12, 2022

Congratulations to Prof. Karl Berggren who has been appointed at the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science based on his outstanding contribution in your research, excellence in teaching and mentoring, and notable service to the department. This appointment officially started as of July 1, 2022.

The Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Chair was originally created as a career development chair, during which time it was held by Prof. Martin Schlecht, Prof, Hae-Seung Lee, and Prof. Martin Schmidt. In 1990 the Chair was enhanced to a senior faculty Professorship.

QNN Quarterly Newsletter

Aug 3, 2022

Dear QNN Group Members, Alums and Affiliates,

Welcome to another issue of our quarterly(ish) newsletter. The group is feeling stable these days… new programs are starting and old ones are ending at about the same rate.

The high points of the past quarter were definitely Navid and Marco getting their PhD’s, and Owen, Andrew, and Emma getting their Master’s thesis completed. Congratulations all! We also have welcomed some new group members and are excited to watch them progress!

We hope you are all well, and feel free to drop a line to let us know your news!

Best regards,

Karl and Donnie

Comings and Goings

The last few months we’ve welcomed the following new group members:

  • Lu-Ting Chou, Visiting Student
  • Shruti Nirantar, Visiting Scholar
  • John Gumm, CQN Visiting Student
  • Daniel Watkins, CQN Visiting Student

The following members have now left and become alumni group members:

  • Navid Abedzadeh, Graduated! Joining HyperLight, in Cambridge MA.
  • Marco Turchetti, Graduated! Going to IBM in New York
  • Andrew Sorenson, Graduated! Off to Navy Pilot School
  • Eyosias Gebremeskel, UROP
  • Uyen Nguyen, UROP – Graduated!
  • Esteban Vizcaino, UROP
  • Joseph Feld, UROP

Theses!

E. Batson, “Reduced Indium Tin Oxide as a Transparent Superconductor,” M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022.

O. Medeiros, “Investigation of Thin Film Supercurrent and Photodetection in Wide Niobium Nitride Wires,” M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022.

A. Sorenson, “Superconducting Electronics for Breakthrough Startshot Communications,” Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022.

N. Abedzadeh, “Techniques for Reducing Beam-Induced Damage in Electron Microscopy,” Doctoral Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022.

M. Turchetti, “Nano Vacuum Channel Devices for Electronics and Ultrafast Nanophotonics,” Doctoral Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022.

Awards

Honorable mention in the PAS Division of Laser Science student Poster Contest at CLEO 2022: Dip Joti Paul, “Infrared Refractive Index Measurement of Niobium Nitride Thin-Film via FTIR”.

Alessandro Buzzi and Matteo Castellani won the EIPBN 2022 Award for “Best Electron Micrograph”. The image A Maze in Grace is at the bottom of this newsletter!

Alessandro Buzzi won an award for “Best Presentation” at WOLTE 15 in June.

John Simonaitis won best poster for “Coherent interactions between electrons and photons in a 10 KeV scanning electron microscope” at the Quantum Electron Optics Conference sponsored by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation in Nahsholim, Israel.

Publications (4/1/22 – 7/1/22)

[1] M. Prentiss, A. Chu, and K. K. Berggren, “Finding the infectious dose for COVID-19 by applying an airborne-transmission model to superspreader events,” PLOS ONE, vol. 17, no. 6, p. e0265816, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265816.

[2] L. Shao et al., “Electrical control of surface acoustic waves,” Nat Electron, pp. 1–8, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1038/s41928-022-00773-3.

[3] M. Turchetti et al., “Electron Emission Regimes of Planar Nano Vacuum Emitters,” IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 69, no. 7, pp. 3953–3959, Jul. 2022, doi: 10.1109/TED.2022.3175706.

Talks (4/1/22 – 7/1/22)

[1] K. K. Berggren, “Superconducting-nanowire single-photon detectors,” presented at the SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, Virtual, Apr. 06, 2022.

[2] T. X. Zhou, “Quantum Applications Build on Creative Nanofabrication,” presented at the 2022 NNCI Etch Symposium, University of Pennsylvania, Apr. 23, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.nano.upenn.edu/2022-etch-symposium/

[3] P. D. Keathley, “Seeing the Light Wave: On-chip Sampling of Electric Fields with Attosecond Resolution,” presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), SF3E.5, San Jose, California, May 12, 2022.

[4] E. Batson, “Fabrication of Microwires on Reduced ITO Nanoparticles,” presented at the EIPBN 2022, New Orleans, Jun. 01, 2022.

[5] A. Bechhofer, “Stochastic methods for geometrical optimization of nano vacuum electronics,” presented at the EIPBN 2022, New Orleans, LA, Jun. 02, 2022.

[6] M. R. Bionta, “Chip-based attosecond time-domain spectroscopy,” presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Virtual, Jun. 01, 2022.

[7] M. Castellani, “Design of a Superconducting Nanowire-Based Synapse for Energy-Efficient Spiking Neural Networks,” presented at the EIPBN 2022, New Orleans, LA, Jun. 02, 2022.

[8] M. Castellani, “A Superconducting Nanowire Platform for Artificial Spiking Neural Networks,” presented at the WOLTE 15, Matera, Italy, Jun. 08, 2022.

New Publication: “Large-Area Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors for Operation at Wavelengths up to 7.4 μm”

Jul 19, 2022

The optimization of superconducting thin-films has pushed the sensitivity of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) to the mid-infrared (mid-IR). Earlier demonstrations have shown that straight tungsten silicide nanowires can achieve unity internal detection efficiency (IDE) up to λ = 10 μm. For a high system detection efficiency (SDE), the active area needs to be increased, but material nonuniformity and nanofabrication-induced constrictions make mid-IR large-area meanders challenging to yield. In this work, we improve the sensitivity of superconducting materials and optimize a high-resolution nanofabrication process to demonstrate large-area SNSPDs with unity IDE at 7.4 μm. Our approach yields large-area meanders down to 50 nm width, with average line-width roughness below 10%, and with a lower impact from constrictions compared to previous demonstrations. Our methods pave the way to high-efficiency SNSPDs in the mid-IR band with potential impacts on astronomy, imaging, and physical chemistry.

A complete description of the work may be found here.

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