Dr. Boon Kok Tan

Abstract:

We present the design of an integrated dual-polarisation superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer operating at ALMA Band 10 frequency range. All the RF components, including the orthomode transducer (OMT), the quadrature hybrid and the SIS mixer circuits, are designed as superconducting planar circuits to form a single planar mixer chip. The mixer circuits will be fabricated using standard thin film deposition technology on an ultra-thin silicon-on-insulator (SoI) substrate. In this paper, we discuss in detail the design of the various RF components that make up the complete dual-polarisation SIS mixer chip, and provide the predicted performance using rigorous electromagnetic modelling. The optimised designs of these components are then integrated in a superconducting quantum mixer circuit modelling (SuperMix) environment for assessing the performance of the heterodyne parameters of the mixer such as mixer gain and noise temperature.

Abstract:

We present the design of a four-port planar circuit beam splitter comprising a microstrip and a coplanar waveguide (CPW) crossing each other. The CPW is fabricated in the ground plane (bottom layer) and the microstrip is deposited on top of the dielectric layer. A small section of the microstrip line is bent and aligned parallel to the central conductor of the bottom CPW, allowing the level of power coupling to be easily controlled by changing the length of the aligned section. The simple layout of the planar beam splitter makes it easy to fabricate in a wide frequency range from microwave to submillimetre (sub-mm) wavelengths. In this paper, we describe in details the electromagnetic design of the planar beam splitter and its predicted performances in the frequency range of 600– 700 GHz. We discuss the potential usage of the planar beam splitter as a replacement to the free-space beam splitter in receivers, in particular those using superconductor-insulatorsuperconductor (SIS) mixer arrays. To investigate the integrity of our design in a controlled way we scaled the design to operate in the Ku-band and measured the performance of several prototypes experimentally. Our tests showed good agreement between the measured performance and simulations.

Abstract:

We have developed anSIS receiver with a wide intermediate-frequency (IF) bandwidth.This is important for reducing image integration time and simultaneously measuring multiple spectral lines. The receiver is a finline mixer-based design, which allows for ultra-wide radio-frequency (RF) bandwidth and has lower mechanical requirements compared to radial stub designs. Simulations of this receiver showed quantum limited noise in the RF frequency range of 140 to 260 GHzand from DC to 10GHz in the IF spectrum.We measured the noise temperature by comparing the receiver's response to hot and cold loads. The best noise temperature was 37.9 K at 231.0 GHz, and all of the results were below 100 K from 213 to 257 GHz (the bandwidth of our local-oscillator). We measured the IF bandwidth using a spectrum analyser, and found good results from around 3-10 GHz. The lower frequency was restricted by our IF amplifier's bandwidth but the higher frequency limit was lower than we expected from simulations. We believe that this discrepancywas due to the inductance of the bondwires that we used to connect the mixer chip to the IF board. We are currently investigating techniques to reduce and compensate for this inductance.

Abstract:

We present the design and some preliminary measured results of a planar superconducting on/off switch comprising two niobium nitride (NbN) bridges deposited across the slotline section of a unilateral finline. The two bridges are separated by a distance of γ/4, such that the superconducting impedance of the bridges could be cancelled out at the resonance frequency. Both the NbN bridges were switched from the superconducting state to the normal state via a bias current exceeding the critical current of the NbN film. A millimetre wave source calibrated with a terahertz power meter is used to illuminate the switch, and the response of the switch in each state was measured using a superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) chip as a direct detector. Preliminary measured results agreed generally well with our simulations, especially when the multiple wave reflection effect is included in our model.

Abstract:

In this Letter, we present the design of a planar microstrip coupler where power coupling between two parallel microstrip lines can easily be controlled. Enhancement of power coupling is done via two small slots in the ground plane underneath the microstrip pair. The ground plane slots force the field lines near the edge of each microstrip to cross to the adjacent microstrip. The magnitude of the power coupling can easily be controlled by adjusting the length of the slots. Here, we describe the operation of a microstrip coupler, and present the design of a1 X 4 power distributor array that can be used to distribute the input microwave power uniformly to four branch lines arranged in a row. We also present the measured responses of the array, and show that the performance agree very well with simulated results.